After completing his studies in Melbourne High School, John Eccles graduated from Melbourne University in 1925. He won a Rhodes Scholarship for pursuing higher studies at Oxford University where he worked under the renowned neurophysiologist Charles Scott Sherrington, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1929. He continued to work with Sherrington for some more time and returned to Australia in 1937 where he was engaged in military research during World War II. In 1952, he worked as a professor at the Australian National University where he and his colleagues performed a research work that won him a Nobel Prize.

Apart from his contributions to science through brain research, Eccles wrote extensively on interactions between brain and mind. Eccles challenged the idea that the mind is identical with different physiochemical states of the brain. After an extensive research carrier in neurophysiology, Eccles concluded that the mind and brain are two separate entities. He also highlighted the incompleteness of the Darwin’s theory of evolution by stating that it fails to explain why each individual living being’s consciousness has a unique identity. In Eccles’ opinion, each living being is a divine creation. He writes, “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. It is the only view consistent with all the evidence.”

While describing the personality of John Eccles, Dr. Jerry Bergman says, “Eccles spent his entire half-century-long career in brain research and published widely in the scientific literature on this subject. He concluded from his research, and his extensive review of the research of others, that the idea that the mind is a product of evolution is wrong and badly misinformed. In the end he concluded that only an intelligent creator could account for the existence of the human mind.”

In 1966, Eccles moved to the USA and worked at the Institute for Biomedical Research, Chicago, and at the University of Buffalo. In 1975, he retired, moved to Switzerland and continued his writing on the mind-body questions. He died in 1997 in Locarno, Switzerland.

Eccles was an accomplished researcher as well as a spiritualist. He was one of the few voices in the scientific circles who did not agree with the prevalent theories based on improbable assumptions. He believed that the universe and life are created with a purpose. As a result he faced challenges and criticisms from his colleagues. But he continued to stay firm on his realizations about mind and brain. About the naturalists who did not believe in the purpose and intelligent design of the world, he wrote, “They need a little more humility.”

In one of his last books, he humbly wrote, “I here express my efforts to understand with deep humility a self, myself, as an experiencing being. I offer it in the hope that we human selves may discover a transforming faith in the meaning and significance of this wonderful adventure that each of us is given on this salubrious Earth of ours, each with our wonderful brain, which is ours to control and use for our memory and enjoyment and creativity and with love for other human selves.”

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As a child, Gödel was exceptionally inquisitive. At about the age of four, Gödel acquired the nickname “Der Herr Warum” (Mr. Why) because he persistently asked “unanswerable” questions. Gödel advanced rapidly through school, excelling in mathematics, languages, and religion at a German high school in Brno. By the age of seventeen, he had mastered the university level mathematics. In 1930, he received his doctorate in mathematics with his dissertation providing the completeness theorem for first-order logic. In the very next year, Gödel published his work of incompleteness theorem that brought him worldwide recognition. The implications of his incompleteness theorem are vast, applying not only to mathematics but also touching on areas such as computer science, economics, physics, philosophy, and epistemology. John von Neumann, Princeton’s “human calculator,” in a speech given in 1951 when Gödel received the Einstein Award, remarked: “Kurt Gödel’s achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental – indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time.”

From 1943, after his great success in logic, Gödel was chiefly occupied with philosophy and metaphysics. When he was at Princeton University, Albert Einstein was one of his closest friends. Like Einstein, he too expressed that the interaction between science and philosophy was fruitful for both fields. His project in philosophy was to find an exact theory of metaphysics. Gödel characterized his philosophical outlook in the following way: (i) “My theory is a monadology with a central monad [namely, God]. It is like the monadology by Leibniz in its general structure. (ii) My theory is rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic, and theological.”

An important aspect of Gödel’s theological work shows that was he was not only a theist but a personalist. He rejected the notion that God was impersonal, as thought by Einstein. He remarked, “Einstein’s religion [was] more abstract, like Spinoza and Indian philosophy. Spinoza’s God is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person”. Gödel argued in private discussions that a system of postulates could be phrased for notions such as “God” and the “soul”. Based on this far-reaching rational belief he attempted to formalize Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God. The proof was less than a page long, which caused quite a stir when circulated among his colleagues in the early 1970s. While reading his correspondence and conversations, we come across Gödel’s discussions on deeper aspects of reality such as afterlife, theological world-view, time, mathematical intuition, mind and matter. These explanations link a familiar and fundamental human concern with more or less abstract philosophical deliberations. In one of his letters, Gödel writes, “we not only don’t know where we came from and why we are here, we also don’t know what we are …. But if we could once look deeply enough within ourselves with scientific methods of self-examination in order to answer this question, it would probably turn out … with quite definite characteristics.”

Indeed there is growing attention to Gödel’s work due its relevance for the increasingly widespread computer applications. However, it could point towards other aspects of reality, just like Einstein’s work, as expressed by Gödel himself, “…Einstein’s discoveries in the first place made the atom bomb possible, is an erroneous comprehension. … but the essence of his work lies in an entirely other direction.” Hao Wang, who was in close contact with Gödel in his last years, made a similar statement about the connection between Gödel’s work and computers. In his book “Reflections on Kurt Gödel”, Hao Wang remarked, “The ‘entirely other direction’ is fundamental theory, which constituted the (central) purpose of life for both Gödel and Einstein”.

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As a young boy, Ramanujan delved in mathematics far beyond his age. By the age of 12, he had mastered Loney’s trigonometry. At 15, he came across G.S. Carr’s book on pure mathematics “A Synopsis of Elementary Results” that stimulated this young prodigy to venture into further realms. As he was exclusively devoted to mathematics, he failed in a few general exams at college. Despite the academic failures, unemployment, poverty, and penury, his urge for the pursuit of mathematics was irrepressible. He would often be seen hiding under the cot, doing mathematics on his slate. This was to avoid being noticed by his father who was unhappy with his lack of financial assistance to the family. For want of plain paper, he would pick up pieces of discarded newspapers or packing paper to write his mathematical notes.

His passage to fame was facilitated by Dewan Bahadur Ramachandra Rao (Collector of Nellore), V. Ramaswamy Iyer (Founder of Indian Mathematical Society), R. Narayana Iyer (Treasurer of IMS and Manager, Madras Port Trust), and several others. In 1913, Ramanujan joined the University of Madras as a research scholar. However, the turning point of his life was when Ramanujan wrote the historic letter with 120 theorems and formulas to G H Hardy, then Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Hardy marveled at the extraordinarily ingenious mathematical results and invited Ramanujan to Cambridge. During his five years in Cambridge, Ramanujan published 21 research papers. He was awarded the B.A. degree in March 1916 for his work on highly composite numbers. In October 1918, Ramanujan was elected a Fellow of the Trinity College, Cambridge. He was the first Indian to be so elected. When Hardy was asked what his greatest contribution to mathematics was, he unhesitatingly said, “the discovery of Ramanujan”.

Ramanujan is recognized worldwide as an astonishing self-made mathematician. What sets him apart is his creativity—his ability to conjure never-before-imagined mathematical formulas. Did Ramanujan have any special secret? Any special method? Ramanujan would see all his discoveries as gracious gifts from Goddess Sri Laksmi Namagiri. Hailing from a pious Brahmin family, Ramanujan was trained in the vaishnava tradition and was deeply devoted to Lord Narasimha (the man-lion incarnation of Lord Vishnu) and Sri Laksmi Namagiri. He claimed that his family goddess Namagiri sent him visions in which mathematical formulas would unfold before his eyes so that he could set these down on paper on waking up. This pattern repeated itself over the years.

Throughout his life, Ramanujan maintained the direction and intensity of his religious and philosophical interests along with his love for mathematics. In the company of his friends and well-wishers, he would often recite passages from the Vedas, explaining the meanings in a lucid manner, or would involve in intellectual discussions about various Vedic schools of philosophy. He could also talk for hours about the intimate relationships between God, zero, and infinity. His profound faith in God and his deep admiration for mathematics are inseparable. “An equation for me,” Ramanujan said, “has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.”

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Steiner was born on 25 February 1861 in the village of Murakirály, Austria-Hungary (today Donji Kraljevec, Croatia). His father, Johann Steiner, was a telegraph operator at the Southern Austrian Railway, and his mother was a housemaid. Young Rudolf spent his childhood in the countryside. Very early on, he discovered that he lived in two worlds of reality – the outer world and an inner world of experience. He always found it difficult to share his world of inner experience with others. So, he learnt to remain silent about it. When he was eight years old, Steiner discovered in his teacher’s room a book of geometry. This gave him the confidence that there was in fact a realm of experience accessible only through human thought, not though outer sense perception, but which was accepted as real. Thus, Steiner took mathematics as an important foundation for his striving after knowledge. He remarked, “In mathematics there is afforded a system of percepts and concepts which have been reached independently of any external sense impressions. … One carries over these perceptions and concepts into sense-reality and discovers its laws. Through mathematics one learns to understand the world, and yet in order to do this one must first evoke mathematics out of the human mind.”

In 1879, Steiner enrolled at the Vienna Institute of Technology to study biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Simultaneously, he pursued his interest in philosophical studies in the search for truth. He studied in detail the writings of German philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Johann Friedrich Herbart. He also attended various lectures at the University, where he heard the philosopher Franz Brentano, the linguist Karl Julius Schröer, and other scholars.

As a student, Steiner’s scientific ability was acknowledged by Professor Karl Julius Schröer. Steiner was asked to edit Goethe’s writings on nature. Later, he was invited to Weimar, to the famous Goethe archive, where he remained for seven years, working further on scientific writings. Because he moved to Weimar, he withdrew from the Institute of Technology in Vienna without graduating but got his doctorate in philosophy in Rostock in 1891 for his dissertation, Truth and Knowledge.

Ever since his youth, his inclination to pursue science was to blend natural science with knowledge of the spirit. Steiner, in a lecture, remarks, “man by means of his senses grasps the physical side of reality ‘from without’ and by means of his spiritual awareness grasps its spiritual side ‘from within,’ so that all which is experienced appears as an unified world in which the sensible manifests the spirit and the spirit reveals itself creatively in the sensible.” He wrote and lectured extensively on various esoteric subjects such as early evolution of earth and humanity, reincarnation, and the collaborative interrelations between the teachings of Bhagavad Gita and Christ. He also turned towards arts —drama, painting, architecture, eurythmy— showing the creative forming powers that can be drawn from spiritual vision. He found the ancient text of Bhagavad Gita to be a meeting place for East and West. From Bhagavad Gita, Steiner extracted numerous conclusions to serve his spiritual scientific research. He remarked, “… the Bhagavad Gita … resounds to us as something responding to our deepest longings. … We now are at the beginning of an age wherein men’s souls will once more seek access in a new way to the spiritual worlds. We must feel ourselves stimulated to this search when we think of how we once had this access that it once was there for man. Indeed, we shall find it to an unusual degree in the revelations of the holy song of the East.”

The rest of his life was devoted to building up a complete science of the spirit, to which he gave the name Anthroposophy. Steiner designed the Goetheanum (named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) located in Dornach, Switzerland, as the world center for the anthroposophical movement. He envisioned it to be a laboratory and workshop for spiritual knowledge to reach out into every department of human activity. He died on March 30, 1925, in Dornach, Switzerland.Rudolf Steiner’s life and work were fully dedicated to bringing a new erudite approach to knowledge through spiritual science, in order to revitalize the most important areas of human culture and education, for the benefit of society at large.

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Planck was born on April 23, 1858, in Kiel, Germany, as the son of Johann Julius Wilhelm and Emma von Planck. His father was a professor of law. Planck began his elementary schooling in Kiel. When he was nine the family moved to Munich, where he attended the renowned Maximilian Gymnasium. Although he had a great love for music, his intense hankering was to know about what was absolute and fundamental; thus he devoted himself to science. He writes in his scientific autobiography, “that the outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.” The first instance of an absolute in nature that deeply impressed Planck was the law of the conservation of energy, taught in a very amusing way by his mathematics teacher, Hermann Müller.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Planck studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin – where his teachers included Kirchhoff and Helmholtz – and received his doctorate of philosophy at Munich in 1879. In 1885, the University of Kiel appointed him as an associate professor of theoretical physics, were he continued to pursue work on heat theory and on Rudolph Clausius’ ideas about entropy and their applications in physical chemistry. In 1889, he was appointed at the University of Berlin where he remained until his retirement in 1926. Later he became President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science, a post he held until 1937.

Although his doctoral thesis on thermodynamics was not particularly well received, he was firmly determined to continue his studies of entropy, the most important property of physical systems. His research eventually led to his quantum theory formulations, now known as Planck’s radiation law and Planck’s constant (symbolized by h), thus opening up a new era in natural science.

He was revered by his colleagues not only for the importance of his discoveries but for his great personal qualities. He was a devoted family man, a skilled lecturer, a talented musician, a tireless mountaineer, a formidable administrator, and an inspiration for all. As expressed by Max Born, “to be near Planck is a joy.” According to Einstein, Planck’s intellectual strength and integrity grew from an “emotional condition . . . more like that of a deeply religious man or a man in love.” He had been raised an observant Lutheran and also won numerous prizes at the gymnasium in religion and deportment. His religious convictions guided him throughout his life, as he faced moments of triumph as well as tragedy. Just before his 80^th birthday, Planck became an itinerant preacher. In his general lectures, he often presented the reconcilability of science with religion. In his major book Where Is Science Going? (1932) Planck pointed out: “There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.” In the scientific world, his writings encouraged the synthesis of rationality and belief. Like many other great thinkers, Planck was convinced that science alone cannot take us to the fundamental or absolute reality. He remarked, “May its (exact science) results be ever so deep and far-reaching, it can never succeed in taking the last step which would take it into the realm of metaphysics. … The real world of metaphysics is not the starting point, but the goal of all scientific endeavor, a beacon winking and showing the way from an inaccessibly remote distance.”

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His legacy is felt every day in the modern world thanks to his outstanding breakthroughs in medicine. Pasteur’s germ theory gave us an understanding of sterile techniques and of the importance of antisepsis within medicine. Because of his research, we now know that carefully washing hands is absolutely required to avoid getting sick or transmitting a disease to other people. He was the first to develop vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His is widely known for the process called pasteurization (named in his honor) where liquids are heated and quickly cooled thereby getting rid of bacteria and microorganisms. He also made significant discoveries in chemistry about the molecular basis for the asymmetry and racemization. In the contest sponsored by the French Academy of Sciences in 1859 for the best experiment either proving or disproving spontaneous generation, Pasteur simultaneously refuted the theory of spontaneous generation and convincingly demonstrated the theory of biogenesis (Omne vivum ex vivo, “all life from life”).

Like many other people, Pasteur was not very delighted in solving problems of mathematics. He used to say, “Nothing dries up the heart so much as the study of mathematics.” On the other hand, he was extremely happy to spend sleepless nights working in the laboratory. While the laboratory became, and remained, Pasteur’s greatest love and favorite place to be, hard work and perseverance were the foundation for his success. He said it was “through assiduous work, with no special gift but that of perseverance joined to an attraction towards all that is great and good,” that he had met with success in his researches.

Pasteur’s life not only sets an example of a man of science but also of a man of faith and belief. He wrote, “This is not to be taken to mean that, in my beliefs and in the conduct of my life, I only take account of acquired science: if I would, I could not do so, for I should then have to strip myself of a part of myself. There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, … who feels that the force that is within him cannot die. The two domains are distinct, and woe to him who tries to let them trespass on each other in the so imperfect state of human knowledge.”

This great scientist set a fine example of intellectual humility; he bowed down to the Supreme divine whose infinite imprints are reflected in the manifested universe. He remarked, “… I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world… The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of those temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated in the thought of the Infinite.”

Thus his life and works are a source of inspiration for the harmony between science and faith. In his own concluding words, “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.”

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Among great scientists with profound religious convictions, Michael Faraday – the famous British physicist and chemist of the 19th century – is one of the most frequent references. “I am of a very small and despised sect of Christians, known, if known at all, as Sandemanians.” That was how Faraday introduced himself to Ada, Countess of Lovelace, in 1844. The Sandemanians form a very closed group defined by a strict adherence to the precepts of Christianity as laid down in the New Testament; they lead their lives by following in the footsteps of Christ’s perfect thoughts and deeds. Faraday’s grandparents, who lived in Clapham, North Yorkshire, first encountered the sect in the early 1760s. Faraday’s father, James, also became a devoted member. In his early years, as an errand-boy, Faraday was often seen hurrying to deliver his newspapers on Sunday mornings so as to get home in time to make himself neat to go with his parents to the chapel. Thus having a religious upbringing, Faraday was admired not just for his marvelous discoveries, but also for his reverential attitude towards Nature, Man, and God. His two well-worn Bibles (King James version of 1611 respectively published in 1776 and in 1817) are now preserved in the archives of the Royal Institution in London. They have numerous markings in the form of one or more straight vertical markings, short horizontal lines, wavy vertical lines, notes, comments, etc., penciled against numerous passages. About 1978 verses were marked in the 1776 Bible and 460 verses were marked in the 1817 Bible. The subject matters of these marked verses are relating to God, to Jesus, and to the practical aspects of religion. For example, he marked two thirds of all the verses in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the Gospel of Matthew, which contains the essence of Jesus’ teachings.

Faraday lived by the precepts and examples of the New Testament. J.H. Gladstone, his close associate and biographer, describes Faraday as a gentle and kind person, having warmth of temperament, a respect and love for others, and a reverence not only for God, but also for his fellow men. He described Faraday as having a child-like simplicity, which reminds us of Jesus’ statement enjoining his followers to become like small children. Another such instance of simplicity and purity can be witnessed in these remarks by physicist and contemporary biographer John Tyndall about Faraday’s prayer before a meal they shared at Faraday’s home, “… petition of a son into whose heart God had sent the Spirit of his Son, and who with absolute trust asked a blessing from his father.” Faraday was also known for his charity and benevolence. He would give away much of his yearly income to the church and various needy individuals. One biographer writes how Faraday “… was continually pressed to be the guest of the high and noble, but he would, if possible, decline, preferring to visit some poor sister in trouble, assist her, take a cup of tea with her, read the Bible and pray.” Although wealth and high social position were within Faraday’s reach, he declined them to remain humble and lead a simple life. He never patented any of his inventions. “Tyndall, I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last”; with these words, he turned down the Presidency of the Royal Society. He prized the love and sympathy of men more than the renown his scientific discoveries brought him. He remarked, “Tyndall, the sweetest reward of my work is the sympathy and good will which it has caused to flow in upon me from all quarters of the world.” Perhaps Faraday’s personal values are best summed up in a letter written in 1860 to his friend the German chemist Christian Schönbein: “Though your science is much to me, we are not friends for science sake only but for something better in a man, something more important in his nature, affection, kindness, good feeling, moral worth; and so, in remembrance of these, I now write to place myself in your presence …”

Faraday’s science, particularly his detailed researches, seems very independent of his religious beliefs. However, several historians have presented valuable insights about the harmonious blend between his religion and his science. James Riley, for example, presented that Sandemanianism was ‘the key to so much of Faraday’s character’ and Geoffrey Cantor in his famous book ‘Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and scientist’ systematically examines the close similarities between how Sandemanians read the Bible and how Faraday read the book of nature. John Tyndall writes, “The contemplation of Nature, and his own relation to her, produced in Faraday a kind of spiritual exaltation which makes itself manifest here. His religious feeling and his philosophy could not be kept apart; there was an habitual overflow of the one into the other.”

Faraday’s scientific quest to unravel the mysteries of nature was to discover the manifestations of God. He often quoted this passage in his public lectures, “the book of nature, which we have to read, is written by the finger of God” (1854 lecture, “Observations on Mental Education”). Faraday strongly suggested that the physical world manifests its divine origin, often paraphrasing a verse from Romans (1:20): “Even in earthly matters I believe that the invisible things of HIM from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; and I have never seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things concerning his future, which he cannot know by that spirit”. Pearce Williams has suggested that Faraday’s science was rooted in his religion, which emphasized the intelligibility, beauty and symmetry of the universe. He writes, “his deepest intuitions about the physical world sprang from this religious faith in the Divine origin of nature”. Faraday’s preoccupation with nature’s laws was influenced by theological beliefs. “God has been pleased to work in his material creation by laws,” he remarked, and “the Creator governs his material works by definite laws resulting from the forces impressed on matter.” His private memorandum about his ideas on atoms and fields contains several references to God, one of which expresses his wonder about how God would not as easily put “power” round point centers as he could about material nuclei. His belief in an all-powerful God led him to the idea of point centers, and thus of fields around them.

Faraday served as an elder in the Sandemanian church from 1840 to 1844 and from 1860 until 1864. Most Sundays he was at church, engaged in communion service and other services for teaching and prayer. John Tyndall attributed Faraday’s weekday strength to ‘his Sunday exercises’, adding that ‘he drinks from a fount on Sunday which refreshes his soul for the week’. The teaching or preaching by the elders were referred to as the “exhortation”. Gladstone describes Faraday’s preaching as follows, “It may be his turn to preach. On two sides of a card he has previously sketched out his sermon with the illustrative texts, but the congregation does not see the card, only a little Bible in his hand, the pages of which he turns quickly over, as, fresh from an honest heart, there flows a discourse full of devout thought, clothed largely in the language of Scripture.” Four sermons preached by Michael Faraday were recorded in a small volume entitled Selected Exhortations Delivered to Various Churches of Christ by the Late Michael Faraday. These contain a series of quotations from both the Old and New Testaments interspersed with commentary by Faraday. Faraday laid great emphasis and importance to the knowledge gained through revelation. He considered that the practical application of science for the benefit of mankind “conveys the gifts of God to Man.” In the closing remark of the first sermon delivered in London on July 7, 1861, Faraday stated: “And therefore, brethren, we ought to value the privilege of knowing God’s truth far beyond anything we can have in this world. The more we see the perfection of God’s law fulfilled in Christ, the more we ought to thank God for His unspeakable gift.” Faraday’s strong religious beliefs are not widely known as he tended to make his religious convictions a private matter. James Rorie commented that these exhortations exhibited “… a comparatively little known phase of his character, viz., his belief in a still higher means of reaching truth than by scientific investigation alone, namely, as laid open for the instruction and hope of mankind by Divine Revelation.”

A short letter written to physicist De la Rive, during his final days, discloses his inner spiritual strength: “Such peace is alone in the gift of God, and as it is He who gives it, why should we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in His beloved Son is the ground of no doubtful hope.” After Faraday’s death, Mrs Faraday replied, when asked about her husband’s religious belief, “… I only point to the New Testament as being his guide and rule; for he considered it as the Word of God… “.

A great experimental philosopher, Michael Faraday is highly admired as a gifted scientist as well as for his synthesis of science and religion, his strong confidence in the authority of Scripture, and his sincere faith in Christ. To summarize with the words of John Tyndall, Faraday was: “Just and faithful knight of God”.

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Georg Cantor was born on March 3, 1845, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, as the eldest son of Georg Waldemar Cantor and Maria Anna Böhm, niece of famous musician Joseph Böhm. During his childhood, Georg’s exceptional skills as a violinist and as a mathematician were soon recognized. In 1856, the family settled in Germany after the illness of his father. Cantor entered the Wiesbaden Gymnasium at the age of 15, and two years later began his university career in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1863, he moved to the University of Berlin, where he studied under Weierstrass, Kummer, and Kronecker. In 1867, at the age of 22, he received his PhD for a thesis on number theory, and was appointed at Halle University in 1869. Cantor’s first ten papers were on number theory. At the suggestion of Eduard Heine, Professor at Halle, Cantor turned to analysis and later went on to solve the open problem: the uniqueness of the representation of a function by trigonometric series. It was while working on this problem that he discovered transfinite ordinals. Between 1870 and 1872, Cantor published more papers on trigonometric series, as well as one defining irrational numbers as convergent sequences of rational numbers. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, his study of continuity and the infinite eventually forced him to depart radically from standard interpretations and use of infinity in mathematics. Cantor’s results were not immediately accepted by his contemporaries. The hostile attitude of many severely aggravated Cantor’s emotional ailments and caused several nervous breakdowns. During these troubled times, Cantor sought encouragement and support from his faith in God, inherited from his religious upbringing.

In fact, Cantor did regard his work as a sacred mission. He asserted the unquestionable, indubitable correctness of his research work because it had been revealed to him by God. In a letter to his friend Gösta Mittag-Leffler, he expresses: “Far be it from me to take credit personally for my discoveries. I am merely the tool of a higher power, that will pursue its course when I am gone, even as it revealed itself thousands of years ago in Euclid and Archimedes”. His periods of isolation in the hospital could be regarded as periods during which, as he told Mrs. Young, the transfinite numbers lay neither fallow nor forgotten, but might be further elucidated by the grace of God sent to inspire new lines of research.

In various ways Cantor repeatedly expressed the intimate involvement of God in mathematics via metaphysics. In a letter to Father Thomas Esser he wrote: “Every extension of our insight into the origin of the creatively-possible therefore must lead to an extension of our knowledge of God”.

Cantor believed that God endowed the transfinite numbers with a reality making them very special, for the greater understanding of God and nature. In 1904, he was awarded the Sylvester Medal, the highest honor, by the Royal Society of London, and was made a member of both the London Mathematical Society and the Society of Sciences in Gottingen.

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He was also one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific methods. Being inspired by the works of Francis Bacon and Galileo, Boyle showed keen interest in experimental philosophy. Unlike most scientists of the day, Boyle emphasized experiment over reason and also published his experimental results along with the experimental procedure and the various apparatus used. These very approaches made a very high impact on the practice of science.

Boyle built his own laboratory, equipped it, and hired assistants. His most capable assistant was Robert Hooke and together they built a vacuum chamber air pump, which was an improvement on Otto von Guericke’s design. This apparatus was of vital importance in many of Boyle’s experiments related to air. Some of the most important experiments established the necessity of air for combustion, for animal breathing, and for the transmission of sound. In 1662, Boyle published an experimental gas law describing the inverse relationship between the volume of a gas and its pressure enshrined in science textbooks as Boyle’s law. His works in chemistry contributed to the understanding of phosphorus, acids and bases, salts, precipitates, and chemical elements. His publications included New Experiments Physio-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (1660) and Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy(1663). Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist (1661) is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.

A study of Boyle’s life and works reveals that he was not just an experimental scientist but also a devoted theologian. He believed in the harmony between science and religious scriptures. According to him, the study of science could expand the realization of God’s glories, and any conflict between science and religion were either due to a mistake in science or an incorrect interpretation of the scriptures. He believed the attributes of God and His greatness could be seen through the scientific study of nature and in the vastness of creation. He states,

“… the vastness, beauty, orderliness, of the heavenly bodies, the excellent structure of animals and plants, and the other phenomena of nature justly induce an intelligent and unprejudiced observer to conclude a supremely powerful, just, and good author.”

His works such as Style of the Scriptures, Occasional Reflections, Ethics, and Some Motives and Incentives to the Love of God and Discourse of Things above Reason (1681) tells us about his faith in religion apart from his love of science. In his will, Boyle endowed a series of lectures that came to be known as the Boyle Lectures. To this day, the “Boyle Lectures” are held annually in London; this is a forum where prominent academicians discuss the existence of God.

Reflecting on Boyle’s life and teachings can definitely inspire the inquisitive minds in the search for truth to seriously consider the great harmony between science and spirituality.

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Schrödinger was born on 12 August 1887 in Vienna, Austria, to Rudolf Schrödinger and Georgine Emilia Brenda. From an early age, Erwin was interested in astronomy; he would ask his aunt Minnie to stand representing the Earth while he ran around her like the Moon, and then make her walk in a circle around a light representing the Sun while he continued to run around her. Schrödinger was taught at home, by tutors and parents, until he was 11. In 1898, he began his education at Akademisches Gymnasium. He was an outstanding student, with mathematics and physics being his favorite subjects. He would always readily help the weaker students in these subjects. In 1906, he enrolled at the University of Vienna and obtained his doctorate in 1910, upon which he accepted a research post at the university’s Second Physics Institute. In 1914, Schrödinger’s first important paper developing ideas from Boltzmann was published. In 1920, he took up an academic position as assistant to Max Wien, followed by positions at Stuttgart, Breslau, and at the University of Zurich for six years. In 1926, he published his work, providing a theoretical basis for Niels Bohr’s atomic model. The equation later became known as Schrödinger’s wave equation. In 1927, Schrödinger moved to Berlin as Planck’s successor. In 1936, he accepted a position at the University of Graz, and in 1938 moved to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, where he became Director of the School for Theoretical Physics. He remained in Dublin until his retirement in 1955.

His deep-seated interests other than physics and mathematics were philosophical aspects of science, ancient and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics, and religion. During his stay in Dublin, he pursued his lifelong interest in understanding life, philosophy and metaphysics. His publications along these lines include: What Is Life? (1944), Nature and the Greeks (1954), My View of the World (1961).

Although throughout his life he was actively engaged in a variety of subjects of theoretical physics, he was convinced that the scientific picture of the real world around was very deficient. He remarked, “It (scientific picture) is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.” He opined that the answers to the metaphysical questions about life, freewill, mind, consciousness could be sought from the Vedic literature of India. From an early age, Schrödinger was strongly influenced by the philosophy and Eastern religion of the Austrian philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He was profoundly attracted to many of the Greek philosophers and to Vedanta, the ancient Indian Philosophy. His ideas about consciousness were greatly influenced by the Upanishads and Vedanta. He strongly believed in the non-dual aspect of Vedanta which propounds the existence of a single universal consciousness underlying the apparent variegatedness of the manifested world. Such a worldview, according to him, naturally facilitates a universal peace and harmony among all living beings. Schrödinger acknowledged that the answers for various metaphysical questions like mind-body problem, consciousness and the meaning of life can be sought in the Eastern philosophy, which he believed to be very much coherent with observations made in science. In the book titled “Erwin Schrödinger’s worldview”, Johann Götschel and Werner Leinfellner write, “Schrödinger became the father of all those scientists and philosophers who have tried to integrate Eastern holistic solutions into the ‘Lord’s quantum mechanics’ – as stated by himself in 1948. …” Thus his ideas anticipated the new paradigm of science incorporating Eastern philosophy.

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