{"id":52553,"date":"2026-01-28T03:54:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T10:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=52553"},"modified":"2026-01-21T20:01:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:01:19","slug":"20th-and-21st-century-physicist-disciple-scholars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20th-and-21st-century-physicist-disciple-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"20th and 21st Century Physicist Disciple-Scholars"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As Latter-day Saints we often refer to \u201cdisciple-scholars,\u201d or people who embody the idea that the glory of God is intelligence, and for whom their scholarship is a form of discipleship. While there are a handful of Latter-day Saint cases people invoke (most classically Hugh Nibley, Richard Bushman, or Henry Eyring), I thought I\u2019d step outside the Latter-day Saint tradition to brainstorm a broader list.<\/span><\/p>\n

I suspect the golden era of disciple-scholarship was the 17th and 18th century, when nearly every revolutionary scientist was deeply motivated by the idea that they were exploring the handiwork of God (Newton, Leibniz, Pascal). We\u2019re past that golden age now, and while Elaine Ecklund at Rice University has written a bunch of books on how many scientists actually are religious, on the whole it is true that they typically aren\u2019t a religious lot any more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I could be snarky and point out that most of the geniuses who revolutionized our understanding of the universe on napkins in candlelight were religious, while the non-religious scientists of today are mostly involved in measuring out values to more decimal places, but I concede that most of this is due to the fact that by the time physics is developed enough that new discoveries can only be made with multi-billion dollar pieces of hardware, the secularization process has already thoroughly run its course. Nonetheless, I\u2019m a strong believer that religious belief can animate the scientific venture, anchoring it in something beyond a quirky Rubik\u2019s cube-like interest, and giving it an added measure of holiness and gravity, so I started curating a list of example scholars. (Here, \u201cdisciple-scholar\u201d is broad, and includes non-religious or non-believers in a personal God whose science was still animated by a sense of awe at a higher power).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0 after I started curating this list, I realized that it was much too large for one post, so I\u2019m breaking it down piece by piece. Below is my list of non-LDS disciple-scholar physicists in the 20th and 21st centuries. All italicized quotes are from Wikipedia unless otherwise stated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Einstein<\/b><\/p>\n

Einstein was famously obscure about his spiritual beliefs, and certainly not traditionally religious. I don\u2019t want to open up the can of worms here, my read is that he had a pantheistic belief system that was not quite him simply loan shifting \u201cGod\u201d for \u201cscience,\u201d but he did approach that God manifested in the orderliness of the universe with what could be described as a deep reverence that motivated his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Georges Lema\u00eetre<\/b><\/p>\n

Belgian priest who first hypothesized the Big Bang. Initially there was resistance to the idea because secularists were skeptical that a Catholic priest happened to come up with a theory that seemed to conveniently support Catholic cosmology. However, later in life he stepped away from connecting his cosmological discoveries to religious principles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Max Planck<\/b><\/p>\n

Spoke often about God. “Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations \u2026 To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view”<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, another quote that should appeal to Latter-day Saints given D&C 131 spirit and matter theology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent spirit [orig. Geist]. This spirit is the matrix of all matter.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Werner Heisenberg\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, he was the head of the Nazi nuclear program. I don\u2019t know the details, but he was friends with Einstein later in life, and Einstein was not quick to forgive Germans or former Nazis, so I suspect it was complicated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Heisenberg referred to nature as “God’s second book” (the first being the Bible) and believed that “Physics is reflection on the divine ideas of Creation; therefore physics is divine service”. This was because “God created the world in accordance with his ideas of creation” and humans can understand the world because “Man was created as the spiritual image of God”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

William Daniel Phillips<\/b><\/p>\n

Won the Nobel Prize for using lasers to cool an atom to closer to absolute zero than anybody had previously. The one person on this list that I\u2019ve seen in person. I believe (but might be mistaken) that he gave a lecture at BYU that I attended when I was in elementary school or thereabouts. He made one off-hand reference to God designing things, but otherwise focused on laser cooling. After he married became a practicing Christian. Founded the International Society for Science and Religion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Arthur Compton<\/b><\/p>\n

Nobel prize winner that discovered the dual wave\/particle nature of subatomic particles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Compton lectured on a “Man’s Place in God’s World” at <\/span><\/i>Yale University<\/span><\/i>, <\/span><\/i>Western Theological Seminary<\/span><\/i> and the <\/span><\/i>University of Michigan<\/span><\/i> in 1934\u201335. The lectures formed the basis of his book <\/span><\/i>The Freedom of Man<\/span><\/i>. His chapter “Death, or Life Eternal?” argued for Christian immortality and quoted verses from the Bible.From 1948 to 1962, Compton was an elder of the <\/span><\/i>Second Presbyterian Church<\/span><\/i> in St. Louis. In his later years, he co-authored the book <\/span><\/i>Man’s Destiny in Eternity<\/span><\/i>. Compton set <\/span><\/i>Jesus<\/span><\/i> as the center of his faith in God’s eternal plan. He once commented that he could see Jesus’ spirit at work in the world as an aspect of God alive in men and women.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Abdus Salam<\/b><\/p>\n

First Muslim winner of a science Nobel Prize for his work synthesizing the electromagnetic and weak nuclear force.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Salam was an Ahmadi Muslim, who saw his religion as a fundamental part of his scientific work. He once wrote that “the Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah’s created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart.”<\/span><\/i> During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted verses from the Quran and stated:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

“Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure? Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary.” (67:3\u20134) This, in effect, is the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Of course, it is ironic that his co-winner, Steven Weinberg gave us the classic line <\/span>\u201cWith or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Millikan<\/b><\/p>\n

Known to Latter-day Saints because he was given the Nobel Prize for work determining the charge of an electron that probably should have been shared with his Latter-day Saint student Harvey Fletcher. (Ironically, it appears that the removal of his name on buildings due to his eugenics beliefs was later vehemently opposed by prominent Latter-day Saint mathematician Thomas Hales).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A religious man and the son of a minister, in his later life, Millikan argued strongly for a complementary <\/span><\/i>relationship between science and Christianity<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/i> He dealt with this in his <\/span><\/i>Terry Lectures<\/span><\/i> at <\/span><\/i>Yale<\/span><\/i> in 1926\u201327, published as <\/span><\/i>Evolution in Science and Religion<\/span><\/i>. He was a Christian <\/span><\/i>theist<\/span><\/i> and proponent of <\/span><\/i>theistic evolution<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Charles Townes<\/b><\/p>\n

Laser pioneer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A religious man and a member of the United Church of Christ, Townes believed that “science and religion [are] quite parallel, much more similar than most people think and that in the long run, they must converge”. <\/span><\/i>He wrote in a statement after winning the Templeton Prize during 2005: “Science tries to understand what our universe is like and how it works, including us humans. Religion is aimed at understanding the purpose and meaning of our universe, including our own lives. If the universe has a purpose or meaning, this must be reflected in its structure and functioning, and hence in science.”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Townes’s opinions concerning science and religion were expounded in his essays “The Convergence of Science and Religion”, “Logic and Uncertainties in Science and Religion”, and his book Making Waves. Townes felt that the beauty of nature is “obviously God-made” and that God created the universe for humans to emerge and flourish. He prayed every day and ultimately felt that religion is more important than science because it addresses the most important long-range question: the meaning and purpose of our lives. Townes’s belief in the convergence of science and religion is based on claimed similarities:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n