Meet the Experts

Althea is passionate about finding ways to gather data to answer key questions we have about the Universe. She has worked with the world’s largest radio telescope and was part of a space mission which worked out what the sky looked like at the very beginning of the universe. She became a Christian after studying science for many years and now she also loves helping people to think about different types of big questions like “Why are we here?” and “How might astrophysics shape how we see ourselves?”

You can listen to her talking more about her science and her faith, in this 27-minute interview.

April teaches biology to university students in America and also travels a lot speaking to audiences about how evolution and Christian faith can work together. When she was younger, she felt like she had to choose between God and studying biology at university. She now believes this choice isn’t necessary, and loves having conversations about science and faith.

You can watch this 3-minute video to explore more about her story of learning to combine her science and her Christian faith.

Bob has always been a curious explorer of the world he believes God made. This led him to study marine biology at university (this means studying life in the oceans), and he now works to help people look after the ocean and its creatures. Bob believes that God gave humans the responsibility to care for the world and other people, and that science can help us do that.

Explore more of his story and work, here, or in this 7-minute video.

Bob studies how volcanoes work and likes to visit them when they are erupting! He looks at the Earth’s crust and how volcanic rock is produced, and, because of his research work, he was even awarded a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. Bob also spends his time helping people think about the responsibility he believes God has given us to look after the planet he made. Bob fully believes that science and religion have important roles to play – he helped set up The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

You can explore more about volcanoes on our ‘volcano explosion’ activity page, here.

Cara always knew she wanted to explore and protect wild animals and wild spaces, so she studied marine biology (life in the oceans) and oceanography (the physics of the ocean) in her home country, South Africa. She has been able to travel and learn about challenges in different parts of the world, including time spent as a head of marine programmes in the Maldives, working with sea turtles and coral. She is passionate about helping people take care of the world she believes God has made and loves.

You can explore more about her story and work through a range of short videos, each of which is less than 3 minutes long.

Cara did her PhD in a subject area called Biological Anthropology because she is interested in people, humanity’s early development and our closest cousins. She studied how Neanderthals (some of our closest cousins) lived and hunted and she now teaches biology to university students, helping them to think about where we come from and how we got here.

As well as being interested in exploring what makes us human from a biological perspective, Cara is also keen to draw these ideas together with other ways of knowing, including ideas about human identity and uniqueness from her Christian faith.

David has two PhD’s, which mirror his two passions, and now he spends his time exploring how the two go together! His first PhD was in theoretical astrophysics He studied star formation, galaxies changing over time, and mass extinctions on Earth, such as the event which wiped out most of the dinosaurs. He then studied theology (the study of religion) and has served in several different churches as well as teaching about theology.

David likes to explore questions about how Christian theology relates to modern culture, including science. He teaches, speaks and writes a lot about this and other subjects. You might also hear his voice coming out of your radio as he is a regular contributor to BBC Thought for the Day.

You can hear a little more about what he thinks about science and religion through a range of short videos, each of which is less than 4 minutes long.

Deborah studied physics and music at university. She was passionate about studying the physics of the Universe she believes God made, so she entered university really excited to ‘see how she could love God with her mind, as well as her heart and soul.’

Through this journey she became interested in astrophysics, and she has now spent many years studying and teaching about physics and astronomy. She has studied far away galaxies and explored the expansion of the universe.

Her faith has always been really important to her and, as someone interested in a universe which is billions of years old, she has also been on a journey of thinking about how we bring together ideas from religion and science. She is ​now President of BioLogos, an organisation which helps people think about how science and Christian faith go together. She loves to think and teach about how both science and faith can help us understand the universe and our place in it.

“We are free to explore the universe with joyful curiosity, relying on God’s faithfulness, discovering all the wonderful ‘how’ and ‘when’ of creation, about which scripture tells us ‘who’ and ‘why’.”

You can read more about her story, here, or listen to her speaking about wonder in this 2-minute video, and about how her science and Christian faith feed into questions about human significance in this 2-minute video.

Denis has spent many years researching the brain, genes (parts of our DNA) which cause diseases, and the ways in which our bodies defend themselves.

His faith is very important to him and ties into everything he does. He spent 15 years in the middle east teaching science and helping people in the church. He helped to set up The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, and loves to help people think about how science and faith can work together to help us explore some of our biggest questions. Often our big questions are about our origins, so he has used his knowledge to explore what science and the Bible say about human identity.

You can explore more about what Denis says about science and religion through a range of short videos, each of which is less than 3 minutes long.

Eric loves ‘playing with equations’ every day. In his research work, he uses maths to explore how parts of the universe work, especially the Sun. He is very interested in the links between science and faith. As a Christian and a scientist, he believes the tools of science can help us worship God as we uncover some of the beautiful mysteries of the Universe, and he enjoys helping people to think about how both science and faith can help us understand the universe and our place in it.

You can hear him speaking a bit about his science and faith, in this 3-minute video for the BBC.

Galileo had a strong influence on the beginnings of modern physics and the scientific method. He studied all kinds of things including speed, gravity, and the principle of relativity. He invented and developed scientific instruments and used his developments to the telescope to find out more about our solar system.

Galileo is well known for supporting the idea that the earth moved around the sun, rather than the other way around. There were lots of groups of scientists and others who disagreed with him, as is often the case with new ideas and discoveries. Some Christians weren’t sure what to think about these ideas at the time as it meant some people had to rethink how they believed God had set up the solar system.

Galileo eventually got himself into trouble and was arrested by the Catholic church by offending the Pope at a time when the Church was already full of disagreement and uncertainty. Since his death, the Catholic church have officially stated that Galileo shouldn’t have been treated as he was. Even when he was under arrest, Galileo kept writing about how important both his science and faith were to him.

You can listen to historian Peter Harrison talk about Galileo’s work, in this 4-minute video, and his ideas about science and faith in this 2-minute video.

James worked with electromagnetic radiation and showed, for the first time, how electricity, magnetism, and light are connected. He is also thought of as a founder of the modern field of electrical engineering. In a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists, he was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein. James was an Elder of the Church of Scotland. He said that his faith often inspired his passion for science, and prayed that God would ‘teach us to study the works of Thy hands’. He thought, and wrote a lot, about how faith and science could work together.

You can explore more about his work in this 3-minute video.

Kepler is known as a key figure in the development of modern science. He’s best known for his work in thinking about how planets move, and for some of his writings, which went on to inspire many people including Newton (and inspiring Newton’s work on gravity). Kepler developed a new version of the telescope, taught maths to people training in the church, and became the official mathematician to a number of emperors and military leaders.

Kepler’s faith was very important to him and he wrote a lot about the interactions of faith and science. His science was inspired by his belief that God had created the world in a way which could be understood through exploration and reason.

In 1595, Kepler wrote letters to another professor of mathematics. One of his letters said: “I had the intention of becoming a theologian. But now I see how God is, by my endeavours, also glorified in astronomy, for “The Heavens declare the Glory of God”.

You can explore more about his work, and ‘Kepler’s Laws’ via this 7-minute NASA video, or explore the wider story of his life and work in this 24-minute video – Johannes Kepler: God’s Mathematician.

John spent many years researching, and teaching others about, genes and DNA (the chemical instructions inside us which help our bodies grow and function in a special, unique way).

His work in science led him to think, and teach about, ethics (thinking about what is right and what is wrong) in science, medicine and in our relationship with the natural world.

John loves to help people think about how all the things we can learn from science and the Bible can help people explore and understand ourselves and the world around us.

You can explore more about John’s ideas about science and faith through a range of short videos, each of which is less than 3 minutes long.

John Polkinghorne used physics and maths to explore some of the deepest levels of our physical universe. He changed from teaching physics to study to become a priest in the Anglican church and had a huge influence in the growing field of science and religion. He taught and wrote lots about the interactions of science and religion.

John loved to help people think about how both science and faith can help us to explore life’s big questions, and thought that “the question of the existence of God is the single most important question we face about the nature of reality”.*

You can explore more about what John thought about science and faith through a range of short videos, each of which is less than 4 minutes long.

* Polkinghorne (1994) The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker.

Jonathan’s passions for the world he believes God made means he was driven to study both theology (the study of God and religion) and wildlife ecology (which means studying organisms and how they interact with the environment around them). As a Christian he likes to write and teach about the Bible and the natural world. As part of his teaching, he likes to take students into the wild landscapes around them in the USA, where they can explore the beauty of the mountains and start to think more deeply about relationships between religious faith, science and ecology. He loves to help other people study and explore the world around us and the teachings in the Bible – and sees these both as ways we can worship God.

Explore more about Jonathan’s life and passions, by watching this 2-minute video, or reading an interview, here.

Mary was a Christian woman born in Dorset, in an area now called the ‘Jurassic Coast’. She was a fossil collector before people even knew what fossils were. When she was 12, her brother found a strange, fossilised skull and Mary worked hard to search for the rest of the 5.2-metre-long skeleton of an extinct marine reptile (ichthyosaur). Over time, her efforts continued to uncover fossil after fossil. She was the first to discover a complete plesiosaur (another extinct marine reptile) and she uncovered Britain’s first pterodactylus (a flying reptile). You can visit her amazing finds at the Natural History Museum in London.

Members of the Geological Society of London paid for a stained glass window to be built in Mary Anning’s local parish church, in her honour.

You can explore her story through this 5-minute video or this 1-minute video.

Faraday’s faith shaped the way he thought about science as well as other aspects of his life. He firmly believed that God had created everything according to ‘laws’ which could be explored and discovered through science. Some people thought that the Bible could teach us about science, but Faraday disagreed with this idea. Along with many others throughout history, he thought that science was a gift from God, to help us understand ‘the book of God’s world’ and would not, therefore, disagree with the Bible (‘the book of God’s word’) which was meant to tell us different things about God.

This way of viewing the world motivated Faraday’s scientific work. He had almost no formal education, but, while doing an apprenticeship with a bookseller, he read every book on science in the bookshop and went to as many public lectures as he could. His important work included inventing the concepts of magnetic and electric field lines, the first electrical generator, and improving understanding of the laws of electrochemistry, light and magnetism.

You can read more about his story, and work, here.

Boyle was known as a natural philosopher (the name given to people who studied the natural world using philosophy and scientific ideas before modern science was developed). Many people think of him as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of the modern experimental scientific method.

Boyle studied and wrote a lot about theology (the study of God and religion) and how science might help us think about God. He also supported those who were translating the Bible into various languages to be available all over the world.

Rodney moved from studying maths, to cosmology and astrophysics, then to theology (the study of God and religion), before completing his training to become a minister. He is very passionate about both science and faith, and has spent a large part of his life exploring, talking and writing about the ways in which they overlap.

Rodney believes that science and Christian faith can work well together in these areas of overlap, if we remember what each is for, and the slightly different types of questions they answer. He believes the Bible tells us about God the Creator, and the gift of science can help us think about how it all works.

As an astrophysicist, Rodney has spent a lot of time thinking about the start of our universe And he celebrates the wonders that science helps us to uncover about the Big Bang. Rodney believes that God is the reason anything is here at all, so understanding how physical systems (like the Big Bang) work can only help us marvel at God who is the creator of it all.

Roger studies big events like earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, hurricanes and pandemics, and how people respond to them when they impact their lives. He has talked to people recovering from catastrophic events in New Orleans, the Philippines and here in the UK – listening to stories of fear, anger, hope and trust. His Christian faith drives him to want to help people who are suffering, and his faith and research work help him to think about how we can prevent these events from becoming disasters in the future.

You can read more about Roger’s work, here.

Since he was a toddler, Tom loved exploring the world, looking at anything he could find under the microscope bought for him by his Grandmother (who studied plants and was also a preacher in a church). He grew up with both science and religion being important to him and his family, and he felt passionate about helping people build bridges between different ways of exploring the world and our big questions.

Tom loved to explore how our physical world works, especially how molecules behaved in different conditions when weird things seemed to happen – like in slimes, foams, and when you mix oil and water. He made discoveries which changed the way scientists think about all kinds of different substances, and never stopped encouraging people to ask big questions.

Tom enjoyed bringing engineers, biologists and physicists together to tackle questions about the physics of life. He also loved bringing the study of science together with philosophy and religious faith.

Tom believed that the Bible gives us wisdom to help us live well under God, so we can tackle real issues and use our knowledge, including science, to love people, and God’s creation, well.

You can listen to Tom talk about ‘The Wise Scientist’ in this 6-minute video, and answer peoples’ questions in this 10-minute video clip.