The Cross of Freedom

Sir Francis Bacon
Sir Francis Bacon is considered to be the father of science, or the inventor of science, and was known as a devout Christian.  He taught that there are two books that matter - the book of nature and the book of Scripture.  He once stated that the advancement of learning should be "For the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate".

Sir Isaac Newton
Another man who needs no introduction.  Sir Isaac Newton was a Christian.  In fact, he wrote more on theology than he did on science.

Here are the names of other well-known scientists who were Christians:

• Joseph Lister, British surgeon and pioneer of antiseptic surgery
• Louis Pasteur, responsible for phenomenal contributions to microbiology and medicine, including the process of destroying harmful microbes in perishable food products (pasteurization).
• Johannes Kepler, highly-regarded astronomer known as the founder of celestial mechanics.  It was Kepler's third law that led Newton to his law of gravitation.
• Robert Boyle, chemist, founding fellow of the Royal Society, one of the many contenders for the title of "Father of Modern Chemistry".  He was the first prominent scientist to perform controlled experiments and to publish his work with elaborate details concerning procedure, apparatus and observations.
• Charles Babbage, known as the "father of computing".
• Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), fellow of the Royal Society, nobel prize winner in physics, Cavendish professor of physics at Cambridge.
• James Clerk Maxwell, acknowledged as the nineteenth century scientist whose work had the greatest influence on twentieth century physics.
• Michael Faraday, a pioneer in the fields of electricity and electro-magnetism.  He coined many familiar words in this area - electrode, electrolyte, anode, cathode and ion to name a few.
• Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the vacuum tube (or oscillation valve).  Considered by many to be the founder of electronics.
• Lord Kelvin, Scottish mathematician and physicist who contributed to many branches of physics.
• George Stokes, Irish mathematician and physicist, who at Cambridge made important contributions to fluid dynamics (including the Navier-Stokes equations), optics, and mathematical physics (including Stokes' theorem).
• Henri Fabre, well known for his popularization of insect natural history, especially in the ten volumes of Souvenirs Entomoligiques. It's been said that the importance of Fabre's works cannot be overemphasized because he alone set up the standards of observational patience and accuracy that subsequent workers were then obligated to match.
• William Herschel, German-born British astronomer and composer who became famous for discovering the planet Uranus. He also discovered infrared radiation and made many other astronomical discoveries.
• Gregor Mendel, Augustinian abbot who is often called the "father of genetics" for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him.
• Louis Agassiz, Swiss-born American zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist, the husband of educator Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, and one of the first world-class American scientists.
• James Simpson, Scottish doctor and important figure in the history of medicine. He has been called "one of the greatest doctors that ever came into the world".
• Leonardo DaVinci, a talented Italian Renaissance Roman Catholic polymath (having knowledge in a broad range of intellectual fields). He was an architect, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, geometer, scientist, mathematician, musician, and painter. He has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man infinitely curious and equally inventive. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and a universal genius.
• Matthew Maury, nicknamed Pathfinder of the Seas and Father of Naval Oceanography and Naval Meteorology and, later, Scientist of the Seas. He wrote the first extensive and comprenhensive book to be published on oceanography.
• Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. A child prodigy who was educated by his father, he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. He was considered a mathematician of the first order. Pascal helped create two major new areas of research (projective geometry and probablility theory), strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.
• William Ramsay, British chemist whose discovery of four of the noble gases (neon, argon, krypton, and xenon) earned him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1904.
• John Ray, English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. He published important works on plants, animals, and natural theology.
• John Woodward, English naturalist and geologist, he is considered a founder of experimental plant-physiology. If was once said of him "He was one of the first to employ the method of water-culture, and to make refined experiments for the investigation of plant-life."
• Rudolph Virchow, German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician. He developed a standard method of autopsy procedure, named for him, that is still one of the two main techniques used today.
• James Joule, English physicist who studied the nature of heat and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI unit of work, the joule, is named after him. He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop the absolute scale of temperature, made observations on magnetostriction, and found the relationship between the flow of current through a resistance and the heat dissipated, now called Joule's law.
• Nicholas Steno, a pioneer both in anatomy and in geology. His work on the formation of rock layers and the fossils they contain was crucial to the development of modern geology. The principles he stated continue to be used today by geologists and paleontologists.
• Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy" and one of the fathers of modern ecology. He was the most renowned botanist of his time, and also noted for his fine language skills.
• Humphry Davy, an esteemed Cornish chemist and physicist who did much research in electromagnetism. Davy's laboratory assistant was Michael Faraday, who continued and enhanced Davy's research in this area after Davy's death.

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