It is a subject that science is opposed to reason and vice versa. And it is that in the history of science we find numerous priests who, over the centuries, made very relevant contributions to scientific progress.
Surely if we join science and religion, one of the first numbers that appears in our mind is that of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). This Austrian Augustinian friar lived in the XNUMXth century and defined the fundamental laws of genetics. His famous his studies with peas in this field of science.
Franciscan, but just as famous, was Roger Bacon (1214-1294), one of the forerunners of the scientific method and to whom the phrase is attributed: "mathematics is the door and the key to all science".
Nicholas Copernicus (1475-1543), one of the fathers of modern astronomy, was also religious, specifically he was a canon of the chapter of Frombork, the seat of the bishopric of Warmia, in present-day Poland.
To him we owe the heliocentric theory, according to which the planets revolve around the sun, and which was made known in his book 'Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' (1543). In spite of everything, Copernicus was not the first to affirm that the Earth revolves around the sun, Aristarchus had proposed it more than a thousand years before, but he was the first to prove it with mathematical calculations.
From the Big Bang to the ovarian follicle
Perhaps less well known is that the creator of the Big Bang theory was a Belgian priest and member of the Les amis de Jesús fraternity. His number was Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966) and his main contribution to the scientific community was to defend that the universe expands there is an origin.
A French monk, Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), discovered that sound travels at the same speed, regardless of its source and the direction in which it travels. His main contribution was the creation of the concept of 'scientific community', that is, the awareness that knowledge and discoveries have to 'circulate' and be shared. And it is that, as much as it may surprise us, this feeling did not always exist among men of science.
René Just Haüy (1743-1822), a mineralogist who is currently considered the father of crystallography, was also an Englishman and a priest. This canon of Notre Dame participated together with Lavoisier and other scholars in the creation of a metric system.
Priest, apostolic vicar and bishop were some of the positions held by the Danish scientist Nicholas Steno (1638-1686). Also as a geologist, a great anatomist, his first point was to observe the ovarian follicle, describe the conduction that starts from the parotic gland -ductus Stenonianus- and study a cardiac malformation that is currently considered tetralogy of Fallot.
The priest Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) was also a scientist who was one point away from discovering how bats orient themselves almost two hundred years after another scientist discovered ultrasound. Famous is the study of him with five bats, whose eyes he removed to then set them free; Whenever one of the days later he returned he has caught the observation that, despite the mutilation, we were able to hunt insects and survive, from which he deduced that these mammals oriented themselves through hearing.
Priests, scientists and Spaniards
In our homeland we also have some examples of scientific priests. A great lover of botany was the Benedictine Cleric Rosendo Salvado Rotea (1814-1900). This religious is attributed, among other merits, the introduction of eucalyptus in Galicia.
Better known is José Celestino Bruno Mutis y Bosio (1732-1808), a cadet priest, as well as a botanist, mathematician, geographer and doctor who led an expedition to Colombia (1783-1816). Upon his return to the peninsula he made an impressive catalog with more than 6.600 drawings of plants.
“Much of the spirit depends on the health of the body,” said Fray Tomás de Berlanga (1487-1551), the discoverer of the Galapagos Islands and the architect of what we know today as the Mediterranean diet, on more than one occasion.
Pedro Gargantilla is an internist at El Escorial Hospital (Madrid) and the author of several popular books.
