Quakers in science

Christian culture
Part of a series on

Christian culture Christian tradition Eastern Christianity Western Christianity Byzantine culture Protestant culture Holidays Mormon culture Cultural Christian
Art Christian symbolism Early art Catholic art Lutheran art Church architecture Icons
Media Film industry Radio formats Video games
Literature American Catholic literature Bible fiction Christian drama Christian poetry Christian novel Christian science fiction Spiritual autobiography
Music CCM Christmas music Church music Gospel music Liturgical music
Science List of Christian scientists Merton thesis List of Christian Nobel laureates Catholic Church and science Parson-naturalist Quakers in science
History Christianity in Civilization Christian history Catholic history Eastern Orthodox history Christian influences in Islam
Christianity portal
v t e

The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, encouraged some values which may have been conducive to encouraging scientific talents. A theory suggested by David Hackett Fischer in his book Albion's Seed indicated early Quakers in the US preferred "practical study" to the more traditional studies of Greek or Latin popular with the elite. Another theory suggests their avoidance of dogma or clergy gave them a greater flexibility in response to science.

Despite those arguments a major factor is agreed to be that the Quakers were initially discouraged or forbidden to go to the major law or humanities schools in Britain due to the Test Act. They also at times faced similar discriminations in the United States, as many of the colonial universities had a Puritan or Anglican orientation. This led them to attend "Godless" institutions or forced them to rely on hands-on scientific experimentation rather than academia.

Because of these issues it has been stated that Quakers are better represented in science than most religions. Some sources, including Pendlehill (Thomas 2000) and Encyclopædia Britannica, indicate that for over two centuries they were overrepresented in the Royal Society. Mention is made of this possibility in studies referenced in religiosity and intelligence and in a book by Arthur Raistrick. Regardless of whether this is still accurate, there have been several noteworthy members of this denomination in science.

Other notable scientists had Quaker backgrounds without being practicing Quakers themselves. These include John Bardeen, whose mother was a Quaker,^[1] and Karl Barry Sharpless, who attended a Quaker school and stated that Quaker values contributed to his success as a chemist.^[2] Together with Frederick Sanger (listed below), this means that three of the four individuals who as of 2023 have won two Nobel Prizes in science categories were raised by Quakers.

Some Quakers in science

William Allen – more known for abolitionism and penal reform; a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Linnean Society of London
James Backhouse – botanist and missionary; author abbreviation "Backh"
Wilson Baker – organic chemist
John Bartram – described as the "father of American botany"; founded Bartram Botanical Gardens in Kingsessing on the bank of the Schuylkill River
Anna McClean Bidder – marine zoologist and first president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
Kenneth E. Boulding – systems theorist and economist
Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain – neurologist known for Brain's reflex; became a Quaker in 1931 and gave the Swarthmore Lecture in 1944, "Man, Society and Religion", in which he stressed the importance of a social conscience
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis advisor Antony Hewish; raised Quaker in Northern Ireland; volunteered in local and national Quaker activities up to at least the 1970s;^[3] her Swarthmore Lecture was titled "Broken for Life"; still an active Quaker
John Cassin – ornithologist
Ezra Townsend Cresson – entomologist
Peter Collinson – botanist with some interest in electricity; his family belonged to the Gracechurch meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Edward Drinker Cope – early paleontologist who took part in the Bone Wars and for whom Cope's Rule is named
John Dalton – taught at a Quaker school, but is best known for work in atomic theory.^[4]
Jeremiah Dixon – surveyor and astronomer known for the Mason–Dixon line
Henry Doubleday – horticulturist and lace designer
Arthur Stanley Eddington – astrophysicist known especially for the Eddington experiment and as a populariser of science, active in the Quaker Guild of Teachers, attended meetings regularly;^[5] his Swarthmore Lecture was titled "Science and the Unseen World"
George Ellis – co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking; won the 2004 Templeton Prize and got involved with the Quaker Service Fund^[6]
John Fothergill – physician and botanist; Fothergilla (witch alder) is named for him
Robert Were Fox the Younger – geologist active in the early days of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
Ursula Franklin – metallurgist and physicist^[7]
George Graham – clockmaker and geophysicist who discovered the diurnal variation of the terrestrial magnetic field
John Gummere – astronomer
Richard Harlan – naturalist
Thomas Hodgkin – lived in the more ultra-orthodox era of Quakerism so wore plain clothes and spoke in a formal manner; Hodgkin's disease is named for him
Rush D. Holt, Jr. – Congressman; former assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; beat Watson; has a patent for a "method for maintaining a correct density gradient in a non-convecting solar pond"^[8]^[9]
Luke Howard – meteorologist known for work in cloud types and nomenclature^[10]
George Barker Jeffery – known for Jeffery's equations and translating works on the theory of relativity to English; his Swarthmore Lecture was "Christ, Yesterday and Today"
Isaac Lea – conchologist born a Quaker
Graceanna Lewis – ornithologist and social reformer
Joseph Jackson Lister – known for his role in the development of the optical microscope; his son, Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, was a pioneer in surgical sterile techniques, but left the Quakers and joined the Scottish Episcopal Church
Kathleen Lonsdale – prominent crystallographer; discovered the planar hexagonal structure of benzene; became a Quaker in 1935, as such, she was a committed pacifist and served time in Holloway prison during World War II because she refused to register for civil defense duties or to pay the resulting fine; her Swarthmore Lecture was titled "Removing the Causes of War"
Maria Mitchell – astronomer who was raised as a Quaker but later adopted Christian Unitarianism
Frank Morley – mathematician specializing in algebra and geometry and known for Morley's trisector theorem. Was the son of two Quakers
Frederick Parker-Rhodes – plant pathologist and linguistics researcher, also active in other fields
William Philips – founder of the Geological Society of London
Lewis Fry Richardson – meteorologist; his Quaker beliefs exempted him from military service during World War I
Frederick Sanger - biochemist, two-time winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; raised Quaker
Lucy Say – naturalist, nature artist, and first female member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
Thomas Say – entomologist, conchologist, and herpetologist
Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. – astrophysicist and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery with Russell Alan Hulse of a "new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation"^[11]
Silvanus P. Thompson – known for his book Calculus Made Easy; developed an idea of a telegraph submarine cable; his Swarthmore Lecture was titled "The Quest for Truth"
William Homan Thorpe – President of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1955 to 1960; his Swarthmore Lecture was titled "Quakers and Humanists"
Daniel Hack Tuke – expert on mental illness; came from a long line of Quakers from York who were interested in mental illness and concerned with those afflicted
Caspar Wistar – anatomist in colonial America
Thomas Young – polymath and child prodigy; raised Quaker.^[12]

References

^ Hoddeson, Lillian; Daitch, Vicki (2002). True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen. Joseph Henry Press. ISBN 9780309169547. John's mother, Althea, had been reared in the Quaker tradition, and his stepmother, Ruth, was Catholic, but John was resolutely secular throughout his life.
^ "Sharpless 2001 Nobel Lecture" (PDF). Nobel Prize. Retrieved January 17, 2024.
^ McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch (January 1, 2001). Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries: Second Edition. doi:10.17226/10016. ISBN 978-0-309-07270-0 – via www.nap.edu.
^ "John Dalton". Science History Institute. June 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
^ Sections 3 and 4 Archived 2008-09-22 at the Wayback Machine, also this Archived November 17, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
^ "Speaking of Faith from American Public Media | Science and Hope". Archived from the original on November 26, 2005. Retrieved November 18, 2005.
^ "The Ursula Franklin Reader". Archived from the original on July 5, 2008. Retrieved April 12, 2008.
^ "N.J. Congressman: I beat Watson | the Social - CNET News". Archived from the original on March 26, 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
^ "Q&A;: The congressman who beat "Watson" on "Jeopardy" - War Room - Salon.com". Archived from the original on March 6, 2011. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
^ Ltd, Not Panicking. "h2g2 - Luke Howard, the Namer of Clouds - Edited Entry". h2g2.com.
^ "I was educated mostly at Quaker institutions, in particular Moorestown Friends School and Haverford College." ... "Perhaps related to my Quaker upbringing, I've always valued personal involvement in a difficult task." - from his Nobel autobiographical essay
^ "Thomas Young". School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved August 30, 2017.