THE POPE HONOURS BRITONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 December 1936, Page 11

THE POPE HONOURS BRITONS

ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. VATICAN CITY, October 30. The Pope has nominated three British scientists to be members of, the new Pontifical Academy of Science. If his health permits he will preside at the inaugural meeting in the Vatican City on February 6, 1937. The British nominees are: Lord Rutherford, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University. Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, former Waynflete Professor at Oxford University, and Dr. Edmund .Whittaker, Professor of . Mathematics at Edinburgh University. When Cardinal Pacelli, the Papal , Secretary of State, returns from his : holiday in the United States at the end j of this month, all these academicians will receive official announcements of , their nomination, and the invitation to atend the inauguration. i The Pontifical Academy of Science j will consist oi 75 academicians, of i whom 34 are Italians. Senator Mar- i coni has been nominated, and Father j Gemelli, an Italian priest and ] scientist, is to be the president. The ; academicians include Catholics, Pro- ; testants and Jews. • < In nominating the new Academicians, the Pope says: “Among the < many blessings which have rejoiced , the years of our Pontificate we like to enumerate those afforded by the spec- ; taele of so many men who have dedi- ; cated themselves to the experimental | sciences who have changed their attitude and their intellectual course with regard to religion. I “During the past century there were ] those who taught the false doctrine ] that the findings of science were in i open contradiction to the teachings of ] Divine revelation. It is, however, a ’ source of profound joy that in our day • these prejudices are evidently out- < moded.” Neither Lord Rutherford nor Sir Charles Sherrington is a Catholic. Prof. Whittaker entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1930, when he was described as ‘‘one of the most brilliant converts of modern times.”