Many Nobel prize winners believe in some sort of intelligent underpinning reality; they are mostly theists or deists:
• ALBERT EINSTEIN [1875-1955]: Nobel Laureate in Physics (he believed in a God like Spinoza did, but a God whose design echoed throughout the universe): “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”
• MAX PLANCK [1858-1947]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Both religion and science need for their activities the belief in God, and moreover God stands for the former in the beginning, and for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, God represents the basis, for the latter - the crown of any reasoning concerning the world-view.” [1958]
• WERNER HEISENBERG [1901-1976]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
• ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER [1887-1971]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: ¨In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game - but they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or to deduce. …The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many apparently are caused by your own mental inertia, while the solution generally becomes possible only through freedom from its limitations. This is perhaps the most exciting thing in the game.” [1954]
• ROBERT MILLIKAN [1868-1953]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “It pains me as much as it did Kelvin ‘to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by men who have never known the deeper side of existence.’ Let me, then, henceforth use the word God to describe that which is behind the mystery of existence and that which gives meaning to it. I think you will not misunderstand me, then, when I say that I have never known a thinking man who did not believe in God.” [1925]
• CHARLES TOWNES [1915-2015]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.” [2002]
• ARTHUR SCHAWLOW [1921-1999]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Religion is founded on faith. It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. For me that means Protestant Christianity, to which I was introduced as a child and which has withstood the tests of a lifetime."
• WILLIAM PHILLIPS [b.1948]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Many scientists are also people with quite conventional religious faith. I, a physicist, am one example. I believe in God as both creator and friend. That is, I believe that God is personal and interacts with us.” [2002]
• SIR WILLIAM H. BRAGG [1862-1942]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Christ’s rule and example showed God as our Father and us as His children, a society in which love governs all. Then if we seek a rule of conduct we should think of what we should like children to be like and what we should wish them to do. We like them to be hardworking, eager, cheerful, sympathetic.”
• GUGLIELMO MARCONI [1874-1937]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer [Creatore e Reggitore Eterno]; the more I feel that the so-called ‘science’ I am occupied with is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.”
• ARTHUR COMPTON [1892-1962]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “For myself, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence. An orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered - ‘In the beginning God.’ [Genesis 1, 1].” [1936]
• ARNO PENZIAS [b.1933]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”
• ALEXIS CARREL [1873-1944]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “We are loved by an immaterial and all-powerful Being. This Being is accessible to our prayers. We must love Him above all creatures. And we ourselves must also love one another.”
• SIR JOHN ECCLES [1903-1997]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “We come to exist through a divine act. That divine guidance is a theme throughout our life; at our death the brain goes, but that divine guidance and love continues. Each of us is a unique, conscious being, a divine creation. It is the religious view. It is the only view consistent with all the evidence.” [1984]
• JOSEPH MURRAY [1919-2012]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don’t see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I’ve never seen a conflict.” [1996]
• SIR ERNST CHAIN [1906-1976]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “I would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation. …I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago. God cannot be explained away by such naïve thoughts.”
• GEORGE WALD [1906-1997]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “It has occurred to me lately - I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities - that both questions [consciousness and cosmology] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - that the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create.” [1984]
• SIR DEREK BARTON [1918-1998]: Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: God is Truth. “There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists.”
• CHRISTIAN ANFINSEN [1916-1995]: Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: “I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.”
• WALTER KOHN [1923-2016]: Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: “I am very much of a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influenced in my thinking by the writings of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery.” [2001]
