I started working on lists of Catholic scientists twenty-five years ago. My father, a Catholic scientist himself, had commented for years on people who shared that faith. The worldly belief that you can’t be both was strong, even sixty years ago.
In 2016 a Society of Catholic Scientists was founded. I had heard of it in the past few years, but only recently started looking into it. The website for the society has a fascinating essay about three believing women scientists in the early to middle 1900’s. One was a Catholic convert in Sweden, and two were German Lutheran. All three knew each other and had long and complex relationships through the two World Wars. There’s a lot more about the society but I didn’t get any further being utterly distracted by the story of these three women.
This is the story of the intertwined personal and professional lives of three pioneering women of science, Lise Meitner, Elisabeth Schiemann, and Eva von Bahr, who lived in a time of great upheaval, marked both by great scientific triumphs and by the human disasters of the Nazi regime and two World Wars.
It is the story of their scientific contributions, their spiritual journeys, and their friendship that spanned fifty often-turbulent years.
Lise Meitner, who developed the idea of atomic fission with Otto Frisch, but who was not given credit, was a Jewish convert to Lutheranism in 1908 at the age of 30. Two of her sisters converted to Catholicism. Eva, the atheist Swedish scientist turned teacher, converted to Catholicism in 1930. She was around fifty at the time. These women interacted over the space of fifty years, with Eva von Bahr instrumental in helping Lise Meitner escape from Germany during World War II. (For a clear understanding of the relationships depicted in this article I would need a triple timeline.)
The author of the article for the Society of Catholic Scientists, Dr. Berta Moritz, has her own blog, “Science Meets Faith.” I explored in it, far enough to find a list of Catholic scientists, who are also women. I knew about ten of these women. Note also, that there are six nuns from the twentieth century making notable contributions! Enjoy reading. That’s my plan
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