Talk:List of Christian Nobel laureates

Confusing "adherence to common social standards" with "deep believe"
Let's be realistic. The purpose of this article is to claim that great scientists were religious. To do so would at least require evidence that the listed scientists were truly devout and not only members of a congregation due to prevailing social standards in their home country at the time of their life. E.g. it was a defacto social standard in the first half of the 20th century to be a member of the Anglican church in England or a member either the Roman catholic church or the lutheran church in Germany. Mere membership does not tell you anything about how commited to religion the mentioned scientists were. In its current state this article is meaningless. P.S.: One of the citiations for Heisenberg leads directly to some questionable website for applying for loans. A great indication of the low quality standard for this article.

Yes, I agree. I have put a better sources need tag on Heisenberg ChandlerMinh (talk) 07:32, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Reliable Sources
I removed a big chunk of the article because it was basically lifted from 100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005), a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, self-published by Baruch A. Shalev. Pepper Beast   (talk)  03:26, 1 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Pepperbeast, Just re-posting this since you mentioned it in the Jewish Nobel prizes article. I saw you removed Baruch Shalev's book. I have to kindly disagree with you since the book is not a self-published book and also Baruch is a well established geneticist with +200 research publications, and his study even has endorsements from two Nobel laureates such as Henry Kissinger and Shimon Peres. On top of that the numbers in the book do reflect similar findings to other resources such as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln study in 1998, 60% of Nobel prize laureates in physics from 1901 to 1990 had a Christian background and the Jewish Virtual Library listing that 22% of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews. It does not violate any wikipedia policy.Mayan1990 (talk) 06:32, 1 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The source could be reliable but it's useless here. It doesn't say specifically the religion for each Nobel. "Christian background" is different than "Christian", especially for scientists. Most occidental atheists and agnostics had a Christian background. However, this article and many others use the source in the wrong way and should be corrected. --73.41.172.167 (talk) 00:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The book has just 37 citations on Google Scholar. My college professor who is just 44 has been cited 30 times. How is Shalev reliable just because Kissinger and Perez, both Jews just like Shalev, endorsed it? This page needs cleanup. Lot of names listed by Shalev include sworn atheists like Feynman. ChandlerMinh (talk) 15:12, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

This page is a Paradox!
This page [citing Shalev] claims that 65.3% Physics laureates were Christians. But the table lists only 15. That is just 6% of total 220 awarded so far.

This page [citing Shalev] claims that 72.5% Chemistry laureates were Christians. But the table below lists only 5. That is just 2.7% of total 180 awarded so far.

This page [citing Shalev] claims that 62% Medicine/Physiology laureates were Christians. But the table below lists only 10. That is just 4.5% of the total 222 awarded so far.

This page [citing Shalev] claims that 50% Literature laureates were Christians. But the table below lists 46. Which is 39.3% of the total 117 awarded so far. In Shalev’s list literature field has lowest share of Christian laureates, but the table given on this article tell the exact opposite—literature has highest share of Christian winners.

This page [citing Shalev] claims that 54% Economics laureates were Christians. But the table below lists only 9. Which is just 10.4% of the total 86 awarded so far. ChandlerMinh (talk) 05:48, 1 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Umm, perhaps you missed reading the lead paragraph, where it says "non exhaustive list".


 * Personally I'm skeptical that the topic of this article is even notable. Why should anyone care what religion a Nobel laureate is? See prior short discussion at /Archive 1. ~Anachronist (talk) 06:06, 1 August 2021 (UTC)


 * People may care because of the never-ending discussion about the existence or non-existence of a conflict between science and religious belief. A list of religious scientists provides input to that discussion. Oz1cz (talk) 13:04, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

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Problematic recent additions to physics list
User Derek-airtken recently added several people to the list of Christian Nobel laureates. I've already removed one, Hendrik Lorentz, because the source provided clearly stated that Lorentz was only nominally a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and formally left it in 1895. All of the others are problematic. I strongly suspect that Max von Laue wasn't Catholic, as indicated. His Nobel bio speaks of his Protestant schooling, and the Royal Society obituary of his admiration for the "protestant Prussian" tradition. It also says "Though he rarely spoke of it, he was deeply religious in a personal way."

I do see some indication that Johannes Stark might have been Catholic, since he was from Bavaria and wrote a book on National Socialism and the Catholic Church, but the source provided does not confirm this. The sources provided for Philipp Lenard and for Charles Édouard Guillaume also fail to confirm the affiliation given. For Lenard it says only that he was "was an early exponent of the anti-Jewish 'German Physics' school". For Guillaume the ref. given is irrelevant, as it only indicates that Gaston Darboux was a Protestant, and that both Darboux and Guillaume were upset when the Catholic Édouard Branly was elected to the French Academy of Sciences over Marie Curie.

I think it's clear that we should only include in this list Nobel laureates who made significant public pronouncements about their religious convictions. By that standard I think that even Wilhelm Röntgen should be removed. - Eb.hoop2 (talk) 16:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I haven't looked at these additions, but I agree that the standard should be significant public pronouncements, not mere affiliation. I have removed a lot of past entries for the same reason. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)