Scientists of the past who believed in a Creator

Early
The age of Newton
Just before Darwin
Just after Darwin
The modern period

Note: These scientists are sorted by birth year.

* As far as we know, the scientists of the past listed on these pages believed in a literal Genesis unless otherwise stated. The ones who did not are nevertheless included in the list below, because of their general belief in the creator God of the Bible and opposition to evolution. But because the idea that the earth is ‘millions of years’ old has been disastrous in the long run, no present day ‘long-agers’ are included intentionally, because they should know better.

Early

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) Scientific method. However, see also Culture Wars:
1. Part 1: Bacon vs Ham
2. Part 2: Ham vs Bacon
Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) Cartography; inventor of the Mercator projection, the standard map for navigation because a course at a constant bearing corresponds to a straight line. He wrote “When I saw that Moses’ account of the world’s origin was in many ways different from that of Aristotle and the other philosophers, I began to doubt their teaching and set about studying nature’s secrets instead.” He was in prison for 7 months suspected of being a Lutheran and his great life’s work, his atlas, contained a thesis on the first chapter of Genesis where he defended God’s word against the philosophers. (Thanks to Catherine Olaussen, Norway)
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) (WOH) Physics, astronomy (see also The Galileo ‘twist’, The Galileo affair: history or heroic hagiography?, and Galileo Quadricentennial: Myth vs fact
Johann Kepler (1571–1630) (WOH) Scientific astronomy
Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680) Inventor
John Wilkins (1614–1672)
Walter Charleton (1619–1707) President of the Royal College of Physicians
Blaise Pascal and article from Creation magazine (1623–1662) Hydrostatics; barometer
Sir William Petty (1623 –1687) Statistics; scientific economics
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) (WOH) Chemistry; gas dynamics
John Ray (1627–1705) Natural history
Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) Professor of mathematics
Nicolaus Steno (né Niels Stensen, 1631–1686) Stratigraphy; see also Geological pioneer was a biblical creationist.
Thomas Burnet (1635–1715) Geology
Increase Mather (1639–1723) Astronomy
Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) Medical doctor, botany

The age of Newton

Isaac Newton (1642–1727) (WOH) Dynamics; Calculus; Gravitation law; Reflecting telescope; Spectrum of light (wrote more about the Bible than science, and emphatically affirmed a Creator. Some have accused him of Arianism, but it’s likely he held to a heterodox form of the Trinity—See Pfizenmaier, T.C., Was Isaac Newton an Arian? Journal of the History of Ideas68(1):57–80, 1997)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646–1716) Mathematician
John Flamsteed (1646–1719) Greenwich Observatory Founder; Astronomy
William Derham (1657–1735) Ecology
Cotton Mather (1662–1727) Physician
John Harris (1666–1719) Mathematician
John Woodward (1665–1728) Paleontology
William Whiston (1667–1752) Physics, Geology
John Hutchinson (1674–1737) Paleontology
Johathan Edwards (1703–1758) Physics, Meteorology
Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) Taxonomy; biological classification system
Jean Deluc (1727–1817) Geology
Richard Kirwan (1733–1812) Mineralogy
William Herschel (1738–1822) Galactic astronomy; Uranus (probably believed in an old-earth)
James Parkinson (1755–1824) Physician (old-earth compromiser*)
John Dalton (1766–1844) Atomic theory, gas law
John Kidd, M.D. (1775–1851) Chemical synthetics (old-earth compromiser*)

Just before Darwin

The 19^th Century Scriptural Geologists, by Dr Terry Mortenson
Timothy Dwight (1752–1817) Educator
William Kirby (1759–1850) Entomologist
Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826) Geographer
Benjamin Barton (1766–1815) Botanist; Zoologist
John Dalton (1766–1844) Father of modern atomic theory; chemistry
Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) Comparative anatomy, paleontology (old-earth compromiser*)
Samuel Miller (1770–1840) Clergy
Charles Bell (1774–1842) Anatomist
John Kidd (1775–1851) Chemistry
George Young (1777–1848) Geology
Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) Thermokinetics; safety lamp
Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Chemistry
Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864) Mineralogist (old-earth compromiser*)
Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869) Physician; physiologist
Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Professor (old-earth compromiser*)
David Brewster (1781–1868) Optical mineralogy, Kaleidoscope (probably believed in an old-earth)
William Buckland (1784–1856) Geologist (old-earth compromiser*)
William Prout (1785–1850) Food chemistry (probably believed in an old-earth)
Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873) Geology (old-earth compromiser*)
John Murray (1786?–1851) Geology
George Fairholme (1789–1846) Geology
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) (WOH) Electro magnetics; Field theory, Generator
Samuel F.B. Morse (1791–1872) Telegraph
John Herschel (1792–1871) Astronomy (old-earth compromiser*)
Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864) Geology (old-earth compromiser*)
William Whewell (1794–1866) Anemometer (old-earth compromiser*)
William Rhind (1797–1874) Geology
Joseph Henry (1797–1878) Electric motor; galvanometer

Just after Darwin

Richard Owen (1804–1892) Zoology; Paleontology (old-earth compromiser*)
Matthew Maury (1806–1873) Oceanography, Hydrography (probably believed in an old-earth*)
Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Glaciology, Ichthyology (old-earth compromiser, polygenist*)
James Glaisher (1809–1903) Meteorology
Philip H. Gosse (1810–1888) Ornithologist; zoology
Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810–1895) Archaeologist
James Simpson (1811–1870) Gynecology, Anesthesiology
James Dana (1813–1895) Geology (old-earth compromiser*)
Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert (1817–1901) Agricultural chemist
James Joule (1818–1889) Thermodynamics
Thomas Anderson (1819–1874) Chemist
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900) Astronomy
George Stokes (1819–1903) Fluid Mechanics
John William Dawson (1820–1899) Geology (probably believed in an old-earth*)
Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902) Pathology
Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) (WOH) Genetics
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) (WOH) Bacteriology, Biochemistry; Sterilization; Immunization
Henri Fabre (1823–1915) Entomology of living insects
William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) Energetics; Absolute temperatures; Atlantic cable (believed in an older earth than the Bible indicates, but far younger than the evolutionists wanted*)
William Huggins (1824–1910) Astral spectrometry
Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) Non-Euclidean geometries
Joseph Lister (1827–1912) Antiseptic surgery
Balfour Stewart (1828–1887) Ionospheric electricity
James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) (WOH) Electrodynamics; statistical thermodynamics
P.G. Tait (1831–1901) Vector analysis
John Bell Pettigrew (1834–1908) Anatomist; physiologist
John Strutt, Lord Rayleigh (1842–1919) Similitude; model analysis; inert gases
Sir William Abney (1843–1920) Astronomy
Alexander MacAlister (1844–1919) Anatomy
A.H. Sayce (1845–1933) Archaeologist
John Ambrose Fleming (1849–1945) Electronics; electron tube; thermionic valve

The modern period

Dr Clifford Burdick (1919–2005), Geology
George Washington Carver (1864–1943) Inventor
Ernst Chain (1906–1979) Shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for co-discovering penicillin. Chain was a devout Orthodox Jew and strongly anti-Darwinian.
L. Merson Davies (1890–1960) Geology; paleontology
Sir John C. Eccles (1903–1997) Neurophysiology. 1993 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology.
Douglas Dewar (1875–1957) Ornithology
Howard A. Kelly (1858–1943) Gynecology
Paul Lemoine (1878–1940) Geology
Dr Frank Marsh (1899–1992), Biology (plant ecology); one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and a strong proponent of limited variation within ‘barmins’ (created kinds).
Dr John Mann, Agriculturist, biological control pioneer
Edward H. Maunder (1869–1931) Astronomy
Robert A. Millikan (1868–1953) Physicist
Dr Henry M. Morris (1918–2006) Hydrologist
Prof. Nicolae Paulescu (1890–1960) Human physiology, medicine
Prof. Richard Porter (1935–2005), orthopaedic surgeon, human spine and foot expert
William Mitchell Ramsay (1851–1939) Archaeology
William Ramsay (1852–1916) Isotopic chemistry, element transmutation
Dr Richard (Rick) Smalley (1943–2005) Nanotechnology. Was Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, USA. Awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research in fullerenes (buckyballs),
Charles Stine (1882–1954) Organic Chemistry
Dr Arthur Rendle Short (1885–1955) Surgery
Prof. J. Rendle-Short (1919–2010), Pediatrics, Autism research
Sir Cecil P. G. Wakeley (1892–1979) Surgery
Dr Larry Butler, Biochemistry
Prof. Verna Wright, Rheumatology (deceased 1997)
Arthur E. Wilder-Smith (1915–1995) Three science doctorates; a creation science pioneer

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