Only 475 Nobel Prizes have ever been awarded -- that's it, for the
whole world, in every category together, right through 1997! (A calculation
based on material from the very interesting Nobel Prize home page at
http://www.nobel.se/). A number of Christians have received the Peace
prizes (Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Dag Hammarkjold, Martin Luther King,
Jr. come to mind -- which I guess is not many, but I am assuming there are
more), but do we know about the sciences?
Only 268 prizes have been awarded in physics, chemistry and
medicine altogether. While I can't think of anyone else, I do find it hard
to believe there is only one confirmed Christian among these. If that is
the case -- or even if there are only a few -- that would indeed indicate
that Christians are not well represented, yet we are not talking about only
one in thousands.
Finally, another angle to explore is whether Christians are well
represented in the sciences on the whole. If there are issues concerning
how Christians view vocations in the sciences, these have importance to us
far beyond the Nobel Prize as one marker of achievement.
Paul
******************************************************************************
Paul K. Wason (207) 786-6240
306 Lane Hall, Bates College pwason@bates.edu
Lewiston, Maine 04240
******************************************************************************