It happened on JUNE 1

1937

The first official session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (which had been reformed in 1936 by Pope Pius XI) was held. The session was inaugurated by the then Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) and presided over by Agostino Gemelli. Among the academic participants were Ugo Amaldi, Giuseppe Armellini, Niels Bohr, Lucien Cuenot, Georges Lemaître, Tullio Levi-Civita, Guglielmo Marconi, Robert Millikan, Umberto Nobile, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Erwin Schrödinger, Francesco Severi, Edmund Whittaker, and Pieter Zeeman.
 

1988

Pope John Paul II signed his Letter to the Director of the Vatican Observatory, addressed to George Coyne. The letter exhibits one of the most profound reflections on the relationship between theology and science, elucidating their reciprocal collaboration: “The Church, speaking through my ministry, calls upon herself and the scientific community to intensify their constructive relations of interchange through unity. You are called to learn from one another, to renew the context in which science is done and to nourish the enculturation which vital theology demands.”

INTERS.org

On the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology


Readings on Quantum Mechanics: An Introduction, by Gabiele Coci

Matter and Light. The New Physics (1937), by Louis de Broglie

The Meaning of Beauty in Exact Natural Science (1970), by Werner Heisenberg

Quantum Mechanics (2002), by John Polkinghorne, from INTERS 

Faith and Quantum Theory (2007), by Stephen Barr

Quantum Mechanics. Philosophical and Theological Implications (2019), by Javier Sánchez Cañizares, from INTERS


Articles of Historical Interest

Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? (1935), by A. Einstein, B. Podolski, N. Rosen

On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox (1964), by J.S. Bell

Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell's Inequalities (1982), by A. Aspect, P. Grangier and G. Roger

Moreover…

Pursuing Scientific Humanism. Letters Between Werner Heisenberg and Enrico Cantore, 1967-1976, a forthcoming book edited by Claudio Tagliapietra, INTERS staff

    

Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science

The Encyclopedia, published by the Centro di Documentazione Interdisciplinare di Scienza e Fede operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, provides new, scholarly articles in the rapidly growing international field of Religion and Science (ISSN: 2037-2329). INTERS is a free online encyclopedia.

Anthology and Documents

To emphasize and spread relevant documents within the scientific community, this section provides key materials concerning the dialogue among science, philosophy and theology.

   

Special Issues

We offer here a selection of comments and documents on special issues in Religion and Science, collected for anniversaries and/or for the relevance of the topics.