Quakers in Science - Some Quakers in Science

Some Quakers in Science

• William Allen - More known for abolitionism and penal reform he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Linnean Society of London.
• James Backhouse - A botanist and missionary. Author abbreviation Backh.
• Wilson Baker - Organic chemist.
• John Bartram — Described as the "father of American Botany", he founded Bartram Botanical Gardens in Kingsessing on the bank of the Schuylkill.
• Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain - A neurologist known for Brain's reflex. He became a Quaker in 1931 and gave the Swarthmore Lecture in 1944, ‘Man, society and religion’, in which he stressed the importance of a social conscience.
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell — She discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis advisor Antony Hewish. Raised Quaker in Northern Ireland she volunteered in "local and national Quaker activities up to in least the 1970s. Her Swarthmore Lecture was titled Broken for Life. She is still an active Quaker up to the present.
• Kenneth E. Boulding — Systems theorist and economist.
• Peter Collinson — His family belonged to the Gracechurch meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers) and was a botanist with some interest in electricity.
• John Dalton — For a time he taught at a Quaker school, but is best known for work in atomic theory.
• Jeremiah Dixon - Surveyor and astronomer known for the Mason–Dixon Line.
• Arthur Stanley Eddington — Active in the Quaker Guild of Teachers, attended meetings regularly.Sections 3 and 4, also this His Swarthmore Lecture was titled Science and the Unseen world.
• George Ellis — He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. He also won the 2004 Templeton Prize and got involved with the Quaker Service Fund.
• Robert Were Fox the Younger - Geologist active in the early days of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Ursula Franklin - Metallurgist and Physicist.
• John Fothergill - Physician and botanist, Fothergilla is named for him.
• George Graham - Clockmaker and geophysicist who discovered the diurnal variation of the terrestrial magnetic field.
• Thomas Hodgkin — Lived in the more ultra-orthodox era of Quakerism so wore plain clothes and spoke in a formal manner. Hodgkin's disease is named for him.
• Rush D. Holt, Jr. - Congressman and former Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He also beat Watson and has a patent for a "method for maintaining a correct density gradient in a non-convecting solar pond,".
• Luke Howard — Meteorologist known for work in cloud types and nomenclature
• George Barker Jeffery - Known for Jeffery's equations and translating works on the theory of relativity to English. His Swarthmore Lecture was Christ, Yesterday And Today.
• Joseph Jackson Lister - Known for his role in the development of the Optical microscope. His son Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister was a pioneer in surgical sterile techniques, but left the Quakers and joined the Scottish Episcopal Church.
• Kathleen Lonsdale — "A prominent crystallographer, who discovered the planar hexagonal structure of benzene."..."Lonsdale became a Quaker in 1935. As such, she was a committed pacifist and served time in Holloway prison during World War II because she refused to register for civil defense duties or to pay the resulting fine." Her Swarthmore Lecture was titled Removing the Causes of War.
• William Philips - A founder of the Geological Society of London.
• Lewis Fry Richardson — Meteorology, "Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I"
• Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. — I was educated mostly at Quaker institutions, in particular Moorestown Friends School and Haverford College... Perhaps related to my Quaker upbringing, I've always valued personal involvement in a difficult task From his Nobel autobiographical essay.
• Silvanus P. Thompson - Known for Calculus Made Easy and developed an idea of a telegraph submarine cable. His Swarthmore Lecture was titled The Quest For Truth.
• William Homan Thorpe - He was President of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1955-1960. His Swarthmore Lecture was titled Quakers and Humanists.
• Daniel Hack Tuke — Expert on mental illness "Tuke came from a long line of Quakers from York who were interested in mental illness and concerned with those afflicted."
• Caspar Wistar — Anatomist in colonial America.
• Thomas Young — Polymath and child prodigy raised Quaker.