List of atheists in science and technology

This is a list of atheists in science and technology. A statement by a living person that he or she does not believe in God is not a sufficient criterion for inclusion in this list. Persons in this list are people (living or not) who both have publicly identified themselves as atheists and whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life. Template:Atheism sidebar Template:Atheism and Irreligion Sidebar

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Scott Aaronson (1981–): American theoretical computer scientist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin.<ref>Aaronson, Scott. "Scott Aaronson". Archived from the original on September 13, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2023. I'm Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center.</ref> His primary area of research is quantum computing and computational complexity theory.<ref>Scott Aaronson (January 16, 2007). "Long-awaited God post". Shtetl-Optimized – The Blog of Scott Aaronson. Retrieved June 15, 2013. If you'd asked, I would've told you that I, like yourself, am what most people would call a disbelieving atheist infidel heretic.</ref>
Ernst Abbe (1840–1905): German physicist, optometrist, entrepreneur, and social reformer. Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, he laid the foundation of modern optics. Abbe developed numerous optical instruments. He was a co-owner of Carl Zeiss AG, a German manufacturer of research microscopes, astronomical telescopes, planetariums and other optical systems.<ref>Joseph McCabe (1945). A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Freethinkers. Haldeman-Julius Publications. Retrieved 7 April 2013. He was not only a distinguished German physicist and one of the most famous inventors on the staff at the Zeiss optical works at Jena but a notable social reformer, By a generous scheme of profit-sharing he virtually handed over the great Zeiss enterprise to the workers. Abbe was an intimate friend of Haeckel and shared his atheism (or Monism). Leonard Abbot says in his life of Ferrer that Abbe had "just the same ideas and aims as Ferrer."</ref>
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove (1926–2012): American nuclear physicist who was known for her experimental work in nuclear spectroscopy of light elements, and for her annual reviews of the energy levels of light atomic nuclei. She was a recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science.<ref>Ajzenberg-Selove, Fay. A Matter of Choices: Memoirs of a Female Physicist. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1994. Print. "I explained carefully to Louis that I was a Jew and an atheist..."</ref>
Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783): French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie.<ref>Jonathan Israel (2011). Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790. Oxford University Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-19-954820-0. D'Alembert, though privately an atheist and materialist, presented the respectable public face of 'la philosophie' in the French capital while remaining henceforth uninterruptedly aligned with Voltaire.</ref><ref>James E. Force; Richard Henry Popkin (1990). James E. Force; Richard Henry Popkin (eds.). Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's Theology. Springer. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-7923-0583-5. Unlike the French and English deists, and unlike the scientific atheists such as Diderot, d'Alembert, and d'Holbach,...</ref>
Zhores Alferov (1930–2019): Belarusian, Soviet, and Russian physicist who contributed substantially to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. He is an inventor of the heterotransistor and co-winner (with Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby) of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.<ref>"Zhores I. Alferov". NNDB.com. Retrieved 21 April 2012.</ref>
Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995): Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist. He received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). He is best known for describing the class of MHD waves now known as Alfvén waves.<ref>Willem B. Drees (1990). Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God. Open Court Publishing. pp. 22–24. ISBN 978-0-8126-9118-4.</ref><ref>"Sometime after this, Hannes Alfvén was brought to the presence of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. The latter was curious about this young Swedish scientist who was being much talked about. After a good chat, Ben Gurion came right to the point: "Do you believe in God?" Now, Hannes Alfvén was not quite prepared for this. So he considered his answer for a few brief seconds. But Ben-Gurion took his silence to be a "No." So he said: "Better scientist than you believes in God."" As told by Hannes Alfvén to Asoka Mendis, Hannes Alfvén Birth Centennial Archived 2018-10-17 at the Wayback Machine.</ref><ref>"Nuclear power is uniquely unforgiving: as Swedish Nobel physicist Hannes Alfvén said, "No acts of God can be permitted."" Amory Lovins, Inside NOVA – Nuclear After Japan: Amory Lovins, pbs.org.</ref><ref>"Alfven dismissed in his address religion as a "myth," and passionately criticized the big-bang theory for being dogmatic and violating basic standards of science, to be no less mythical than religion." Helge Kragh, Matter and Spirit in the Universe: Scientific and Religious Preludes to Modern Cosmology (2004), page 252.</ref>
Jim Al-Khalili OBE (1962–): Iraqi-born British quantum physicist, author and science communicator. He is professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey<ref>"I find it more comfortable to say I'm an atheist, and for that I probably have someone like Dawkins to thank." – Jim Al-Khalili, BBC – Radio 4 – Science Explorer: Jim Al-Khalili featured in The Life Scientific, BBC.co.uk.com.</ref>
Philip W. Anderson (1923–2020): American physicist. He was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977. Anderson has made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism and high-temperature superconductivity.<ref>Philip W. Anderson (2011). "Imaginary Friend, Who Art in Heaven". More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon. World Scientific. p. 177. ISBN 978-981-4350-12-9. We atheists can, as he does, argue that, with the modern revolution in attitudes toward homosexuals, we have become the only group that may not reveal itself in normal social discourse.</ref>
Jacob Appelbaum (1983–): American computer security researcher and hacker. He is a core member of the Tor project.<ref>"Jacob Appelbaum (Part 1/2) Digital Anti-Repression Workshop – April 26, 2012". YouTube. Retrieved 28 June 2013. Like, for me, as an atheist, bisexual, Jew, I'm gonna go on, uh – oh and Emma Goldman is one of my great heroes and I really think that anarchism is a fantastic principle by which to fashion a utopian society even if we can't get there.</ref>
François Arago (1786–1853): French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician.<ref>"The same Arago who spent his time criticizing unfounded myths now peddled them. Arago the atheist now spoke of souls." Theresa Levitt, The shadow of enlightenment: optical and political transparency in France, 1789–1848, page 105.</ref>
Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927): Swedish scientist and the first Swedish Nobel Prize winner.<ref>Gordon Stein (1988). The encyclopedia of unbelief. Vol. 1. Prometheus Books. p. 594. ISBN 978-0-87975-307-8. Svante Arrhenius (I859-I927), recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry (I903), was a declared atheist and the author of The Evolution of the Worlds and other works on cosmic physics.</ref><ref>NNDB.com. "Svante Arrhenius". Soylent Communications. Retrieved 11 September 2012.</ref>
Abhay Ashtekar (1949–): Indian theoretical physicist. As the creator of Ashtekar variables, he is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity and its subfield loop quantum cosmology.<ref>"'He brings a humanness to (science) that's very refreshing'". Rediff On The News. Retrieved 31 October 2014. Although he is an atheist, Dr Ashtekar says, his attitude toward work is from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad Gita.</ref>
Larned B. Asprey (1919–2005): American chemist noted for his work on actinide, lanthanide, rare earth, and fluorine chemistry, and for his contributions to nuclear chemistry on the Manhattan Project and later at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.<ref>Asprey, Margaret Williams (2014). A True Nuclear Family. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford. pp. 110, 349. ISBN 9781490726656. OCLC 870564799.</ref>
Peter Atkins (1940–): English quantum chemist and professor of chemistry at Lincoln College, Oxford, in England.<ref>When asked by Rod Liddle in the documentary The Trouble with Atheism "Give me your views on the existence, or otherwise, of God", Peter Atkins replied "Well it's fairly straightforward: there isn't one. And there's no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don't believe that there is one. And I think that it is rather foolish that people do think that there is one.""The Trouble with Atheism, UK Channel 4 TV". 2006-12-18.</ref>
Scott Atran (1952–): American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan, and cofounder of ARTIS International and of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict Archived 2018-05-14 at the Wayback Machine at Oxford University.<ref>"Scott Atran: Scientists and the secular-minded predict the demise of religion, but around the globe it is thriving". TheGuardian.com. 28 October 2008.</ref>
Julius Axelrod (1912–2004): American Nobel Prize–winning biochemist, noted for his work on the release and reuptake of catecholamine neurotransmitters and major contributions to the understanding of the pineal gland and how it is regulated during the sleep-wake cycle.<ref>"Although he became an atheist early in life and resented the strict upbringing of his parents' religion, he identified with Jewish culture and joined several international fights against anti-Semitism." Craver, Carl F: "Axelrod, Julius", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 19 p. 122. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.</ref>

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Sir Edward Battersby Bailey FRS (1881–1965): British geologist, director of the British Geological Survey.<ref>"In religious matters he was an atheist." A.G. MacGregor: "Bailey, Edward Battersby", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 1 p. 393. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.</ref>
Gregory Bateson (1904–1980): English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields.<ref>Noel G. Charlton (2008). Understanding Gregory Bateson: mind, beauty, and the sacred earth. SUNY Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-7914-7452-5. This was to be the last large-scale work of lifelong atheist Bateson, seeking to understand the meaning of the sacred.</ref>
Sir Patrick Bateson FRS (1938–2017): English biologist and science writer, Emeritus Professor of ethology at the University of Cambridge and president of the Zoological Society of London.<ref>"A confirmed agnostic, he [Bateson] was converted to atheism after attending a dinner where he tried to converse with a woman who was a creationist. "For many years what had been good enough for Darwin was good enough for me. Not long after that dreadful dinner, Richard Dawkins wrote to me to ask whether I would publicly affirm my atheism. I could see no reason why not." " Lewis Smith, 'Science has second thoughts about life', The Times (London), January 1, 2008, Pg. 24.</ref>
William Bateson (1861–1926): English geneticist, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, where he eventually became Master. He was the first person to use the term "genetics" to describe the study of heredity and biological inheritance, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery.<ref>"William Bateson was a very militant atheist and a very bitter man, I fancy. Knowing that I was interested in biology, they invited me when I was still a school girl to go down and see the experimental garden. I remarked to him what I thought then, and still think, that doing research must be the most wonderful thing in the world and he snapped at me that it wasn't wonderful at all, it was tedious, disheartening, annoying and anyhow you didn't need an experimental garden to do research." Interview with Dr. Cecilia Gaposchkin Archived 2015-05-03 at the Wayback Machine by Owen Gingerich, March 5, 1968.</ref>
George Beadle (1903–1989): American scientist in the field of genetics, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate who, with Edward Tatum, discovered the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells in 1958.<ref>George Beadle, An Uncommon Farmer: The Emergence of Genetics in the 20th Century. CSHL Press. 2003. p. 273. ISBN 9780879696887. Beadle's views on this occasion were somewhat more tempered than David's characterization of him as a "vehement atheist," and from his earliest days "intolerant of religion and other forms of superstition.</ref>
John Stewart Bell FRS (1928–1990): Irish physicist. Best known for his discovery of Bell's theorem.<ref>John Ellis, D. Amati (2000). "Biographical notes on John Bell". Quantum Reflections. Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0-521-63008-5. Retrieved 4 February 2017. By now, he was also a 'Protestant Atheist', which he remained all his life.</ref><ref>Andrew Whitaker; Mary Bell; Shan Gao (Sep 19, 2016). "1 – John Bell – The Irish Connection". Quantum Nonlocality and Reality: 50 Years of Bell's Theorem. Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-107-10434-1. John Bell was certainly not interested in Protestantism as such – his wife Mary [33] has reported that he was an atheist most of his life.</ref>
Richard E. Bellman (1920–1984): American applied mathematician, best known for his invention of dynamic programming in 1953, along with other important contributions in other fields of mathematics.<ref>Richard Bellman (June 1984). "Growing Up in New York City". Eye Of The Hurricane. World Scientific Publishing Company. p. 7. ISBN 978-981-4635-70-7. Retrieved 5 July 2021. Naturally, I was raised as an atheist. This was quite easy since the only one in the family that had any religion was my grandmother, and she was of German stock. Although she believed in God, and went to the synagogue on the high holy days, there was no nonsense about ritual. I well remember when I went off to the army, she said, "God will protect you." I smiled politely. She added, "I know you don't believe in God, but he will protect you anyway." I know many sophisticated and highly intelligent people who are practicing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., feel strongly that religion, or lack of it, is a highly personal matter. My own attitude is like Lagrange's. One day, he was asked by Napoleon whether he believed in God. "Sire," he said, "I have no need of that hypothesis."</ref>
Charles H. Bennett (1943–): American physicist, information theorist and IBM Fellow at IBM Research. He is best known for his work in quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation and is one of the founding fathers of modern quantum information theory.<ref>"I am so sorry to hear of Asher's passing. I will miss his scientific insight and advice, but even more his humor and stuborn [sic] integrity. I remember when one of his colleagues complained about Asher's always rejecting his manuscript when they were sent to him to referee. Asher said in effect, "You should thank me. I am only trying to protect your reputation." He often pretended to consult me, a fellow atheist, on matters of religious protocol. As we waited in line to eat the hors d'oeuvres at a conference in Evanston, he said, "There is a prayer Jews traditionally say when they do something new that they have never done before. I am about to eat a new kind of non-Kosher food. Do you think I should say the prayer?" My wife and grown children, who are visiting us this new year, and remember Asher from when we all lived in Cambridge 20 years ago, join me in sending you our condolences for this sudden loss of an irrepressible and irreplaceable person. Please convey our feelings especially to your mother at this difficult time. " Charles H. Bennett's letter written to the family of Israeli physicist, Asher Peres, A selection of the many letters of condolence sent to the Peres family during January 2005 Archived 2011-11-26 at the Wayback Machine.</ref>
John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971): British biophysicist. Best known for pioneering X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.<ref>"The Bernals were originally Sephardic Jews who came to Ireland in 1840 from Spain via Amsterdam and London. They converted to Catholicism and John was Jesuit-educated. John enthusiastically supported the Easter Rising and, as a boy, he organised a Society for Perpetual Adoration. He moved away from religion as an adult, becoming an atheist." William Reville, John Desmond Bernal – The Sage Archived 2014-10-25 at the Wayback Machine.</ref>
Tim Berners-Lee (1955–): English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.<ref>Döpfner, Mathias. "The inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the internet, 'fake news,' and why net neutrality is so important". Business Insider. Retrieved 24 December 2019.</ref>
Marcellin Berthelot (1827–1907): French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen-Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances and disproved the theory of vitalism.<ref>Robert K. Wilcox (2010). The Truth About the Shroud of Turin: Solving the Mystery. Regnery Gateway. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-59698-600-8. In 1902, Marcellin P. Berthelot, often called the founder of modern organic chemistry, was one of France's most celebrated scientists—if not the world's. He was permanent secretary of the French Academy, having succeeded the giant Louis Pasteur, the renowned microbiologist. Unlike Delage, an agnostic, Berthelot was an atheist—and militantly so.</ref><ref>Thomas de Wesselow (2012). The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-58855-0. Although Delage made it clear that he did not regard Jesus as the resurrected Son of God, his paper upset the atheist members of the Academy, including its secretary, Marcellin Berthelot, who prevented its full publication in the Academy's bulletin.</ref>
Claude Louis Berthollet (1748–1822): French chemist.<ref name="autogenerated274">"Napoleon replies: "How comes it, then, that Laplace was an atheist? At the Institute neither he nor Monge, nor Berthollet, nor Lagrange believed in God. But they did not like to say so." Baron Gaspard Gourgaud, Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena with General Baron Gourgaud (1904), page 274.</ref>
Hans Bethe (1906–2005): German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.<ref>Horgan, J. (1992) Profile: Hans A. Bethe – Illuminator of the Stars, Scientific American 267(4), 32–40.</ref> A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and astrophysics. During World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory which developed the first atomic bombs. There he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons, and did theoretical work on the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.<ref>Denis Brian (2001). The Voice Of Genius: Conversations With Nobel Scientists And Other Luminaries. Basic Books. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-7382-0447-5. Bethe: "I am an atheist."</ref>
Norman Bethune (1890–1939): Canadian physician and medical innovator.<ref>Larry Hannant (1998). The Politics of Passion: Norman Bethune's Writing and Art. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-0907-4. Bethune was a communist and an atheist with a healthy contempt for his evangelical father.</ref>
Patrick Blackett OM, CH, FRS (1897–1974): Nobel Prize-winning English experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism.<ref>"The grandson of a vicar on his father's side, Blackett respected religious observances that were established social customs, but described himself as agnostic or atheist." Mary Jo Nye: "Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 19 p. 293. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.</ref>
Colin Blakemore (1944–2022): British neurobiologist, specialising in vision and the development of the brain, who is Professor of Neuroscience and Philosophy in the School of Advanced Study, University of London and Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.<ref>Clarke, Peter. All in the Mind?: Does Neuroscience Challenge Faith? N.p.: Lion, 2015. Print. "Blakemore is indeed an atheist..."</ref>
Christian Bohr (1855–1911): Danish physician; father of physicist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr, and of mathematician Harald Bohr; grandfather of physicist and Nobel laureate Aage Bohr. Christian Bohr is known for having characterized respiratory dead space and described the Bohr effect.<ref>Tom Siegfried (June 28, 2013). "When the atom went quantum – Bohr's revolutionary atomic theory turns 100". Society for Science & the Public 2000. Retrieved 1 July 2013. As for standard religion, though, Bohr was unsympathetic. His mother was a nonpracticing Jew, his father an atheist Lutheran.</ref>
Niels Bohr (1885–1962): Danish physicist. Best known for his foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.<ref>Simmons, John (1996). The Scientific 100: a rankings of the most influential scientists, past and present. Carol Publishing Group. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-8065-1749-0. His mother was warm and intelligent, and his father, as Bohr himself later recalled, recognized "that something was expected of me." The family was not at all devout, and Bohr became an atheist who regarded religious thought as harmful and misguided.</ref><ref>J. Faye; H. Folse, eds. (2010). Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy. Springer. p. 88. ISBN 978-90-481-4299-6. Planck was religious and had a firm belief in God; Bohr was not, but his objection to Planck's view had no anti-religious motive.</ref><ref>Ray Spangenburg; Diane Kit Moser (2008). Niels Bohr: Atomic Theorist (2 ed.). Infobase Publishing. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-8160-6178-5. Niels had quietly resigned his membership in the Lutheran Church the previous April. Although he had sought out religion as a child, by the time of their marriage he no longer "was taken" by it, as he put it. "And for me it was exactly the same," Margrethe later explained. "[Interest in religion] disappeared completely," although at the time of their wedding, she was still a member of the Lutheran Church. (Niels's parents were also married in a civil, not a religious, ceremony, and Harald also resigned his membership in the Lutheran Church just before his wedding, a few years later.)</ref><ref>Science and Religion in Dialogue, Two Volume Set. John Wiley & Sons. 11 January 2010. p. 416. ISBN 978-1-4051-8921-7. On the other hand Bohr wrote of his admiration for the writing and presentation of Kierkegaard – at the same time stating he could not accept some of it. Part of this may have followed from Kierkegaard being a very avowed, yet rather circuitous proponent of a costly Christian faith, while after a youth of confirming faith Bohr himself was a non-believer.</ref><ref>Larry Witham (2006). The Measure of God: History's Greatest Minds Wrestle with Reconciling Science and Religion. HarperCollins. pp. 138–139. ISBN 978-0-06-085833-9. "Bohr's atheism, the counterpiece of Einstein's monotheism, ... was more affined to traditional Far Eastern philosophy," according to Stent. ...The young Bohr thus lived in two worlds, but mostly the cultural Christianity of the Danish middle class. As a young man, he had read Søren Kierkegaard, a fellow Dane and a Christian existentialist from the nineteenth century, with some enthusiasm. But he finally faced a religious crisis, and by the time he went to England to study physics, the idea of God had lost its appeal. The aim of life was happiness, he wrote his fiancée, making it impossible "that a person must beg from and bargain with fancied powers infinitely stronger than himself." ... In his only published paper on the topic of religion, Bohr spoke not of deities and doctrines but of psychological experience.</ref><ref>Gunther S. Stent; Balazs Hargittai; István Hargittai (2005). Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists. Imperial College Press. p. 518. ISBN 978-1-86094-505-2. Gunther S. Stent: "Niels Bohr was one of the few five-star scientists who really was an atheist — and not merely paying lip service to atheism."</ref><ref name=heilbron>John L. Heilbron; Finn Aaserud (2013). Love, Literature and the Quantum Atom: Niels Bohr's 1913 Trilogy Revisited. Oxford University Press. pp. 159–160. ISBN 978-0-19-166973-6. A statement about religion in the loose notes on Kierkegaard may throw light on the notion of wildness that appears in many of Bohr's letters. "I, who do not feel in any way united with, and even less, bound to a God, and therefore am also much poorer [than Kierkegaard], would say that the good [is] the overall lofty goal, as only by being good [can one] judge according to worth and right."</ref><ref>Finn Aaserud; John L. Heilbron (2013). "Part 2. Nascent Science". Love, Literature and the Quantum Atom: Niels Bohr's 1913 Trilogy Revisited. Oxford University Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-19-968028-3. Bohr's sort of humor, use of parables and stories, tolerance, dependence on family, feelings of indebtedness, obligation, and guilt, and his sense of responsibility for science, community, and, ultimately, humankind in general, are common traits of the Jewish intellectual. So too is a well-fortified atheism. Bohr ended with no religious belief and a dislike of all religions that claimed to base their teachings on revelations.</ref>
Sir Hermann Bondi KCB, FRS (1919–2005): Anglo-Austrian mathematician and cosmologist, best known for co-developing the steady-state theory of the universe and important contributions to the theory of general relativity.<ref>"Since his childhood in Vienna Bondi had been an atheist, developing from an early age a view on religion that associated it with repression and intolerance. This view, which he shared with Hoyle, never left him. On several occasions he spoke out on behalf of freethinking, so-called, and became early on active in British atheist or "humanist" circles. From 1982 to 1999, he was president of the British Humanist Association, and he also served as president of the Rationalist Press Association of United Kingdom." Helge Kragh: "Bondi, Hermann", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 19 p. 343. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. Accessed via Gale Virtual Reference Library Archived 2008-05-27 at the Wayback Machine April 29, 2008.</ref><ref>In a letter to the Guardian, Jane Wynne Willson, Vice-President of the British Humanist Association, added to his obituary: "Also president of the Rationalist Press Association from 1982 until his death, and with a particular interest in Indian rationalism, Hermann was a strong supporter of the Atheist Centre in Andhra Pradesh. He and his wife Christine visited the centre a number of times, and the hall in the science museum there bears his name. When presented with a prestigious international award, he divided a large sum of money between the Atheist Centre and women's health projects in Mumbai." Obituary letter: Hermann Bondi, Guardian, September 23, 2005 (accessed April 29, 2008).</ref>
Paul D. Boyer (1918–2018): American biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1997.<ref>Boyer, Paul. "A Path to Atheism". Freedom From Religion Foundation. Retrieved February 3, 2007.</ref>
Sydney Brenner (1927–2019): South African molecular biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with Bob Horvitz and John Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.<ref>István Hargittai; Magdolna Hargittai (2006-10-23). Candid Science VI: More Conversations with Famous Scientists. Books.google.com. p. 32. Retrieved 2016-12-01.</ref>
Calvin Bridges (1889–1938): American geneticist, known especially for his work on fruit fly genetics.<ref>"...he always remained true to his own concepts and ideals and did not dissimulate. His open designation of himself as "atheist" in "Who's Who in America" and his opposition to the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Allies..." H J Muller, 'Dr. Calvin B. Bridges', Nature 143, 191–192 (04 Feb 1939).</ref>
Percy Williams Bridgman (1882–1961): American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures.<ref>"Percy Williams Bridgman". NNDB.com. Retrieved 24 April 2012. He was raised in the Congregational Church, but faith in God clashed with his well-known analytical nature and he told his family as a young man that he could not in good conscience become a church member.</ref><ref>Maila L. Walter (1990). Science and Cultural Crisis: An Intellectual Biography of Percy Williams Bridgman (1882–1961). Stanford University Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN 978-0-8047-1796-0. Raymond Bridgman was extremely disappointed with his son's rejection of his religious views. Near the end of his life, however, he offered a conciliatory interpretation that allowed him to accept Percy's commitment to honesty and integrity as a moral equivalent to religion.</ref><ref>Ray Monk (2013). Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. Random House LLC. ISBN 978-0-385-50413-3. In many ways they were opposites; Kemble, the theorist, was a devout Christian, while Bridgman, the experimentalist, was a strident atheist.</ref>
Louis de Broglie (1892–1987): French physicist who made groundbreaking contributions to quantum theory and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1929.<ref>Evans, James; Thorndike, Alan S. (2007). Quantum Mechanics at the Crossroads: New Perspectives From History, Philosophy And Physics. Springer. p. 71. ISBN 978-3-540-32663-2. Asked to join Le Conseil de l'Union Catholique des Scientifiques Français, Louis declined because, he said, he had ceased the religious practices of his youth.</ref><ref>Kimball, John (2015). Physics Curiosities, Oddities, and Novelties. CRC Press. p. 323. ISBN 978-1-4665-7636-0.</ref>
Ruth Mack Brunswick (1897–1946): American psychologist, a close confidant of and collaborator with Sigmund Freud.<ref>"Although in her youth she had shared her father's Zionist sympathies, she was not otherwise involved in Jewish affairs and was by conviction an atheist." 'BRUNSWICK, Ruth Jane Mack (Feb. 17, 1897-Jan. 24, 1946)' in Notable American Women: 1607–1950. Retrieved August 01, 2008, from Credo Reference</ref>
Mario Bunge (1919–2020): Argentine-Canadian philosopher and physicist. His philosophical writings combined scientific realism, systemism, materialism, emergentism, and other principles.<ref>"Bunge: 'La muerte no es un misterio para quien sepa algo de biología.'". ABC Digital. Retrieved 2021-02-21.</ref>
Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet FRS FAA FRSNZ (1899–1985): Australian virologist best known for his contributions to immunology. He won the Nobel Prize in 1960 for predicting acquired immune tolerance and was best known for developing the theory of clonal selection.<ref>"College Roll: Burnet, Sir Frank Macfarlane." RACP: College Roll. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Jan. 2017. "He...developed a fairly aggressive atheism."</ref>
Geoffrey Burnstock (1929–2020): Australian neurobiologist and President of the Autonomic Neuroscience Centre of the UCL Medical School. He is best known for coining the term purinergic signaling, which he discovered in the 1970s. He played a key role in the discovery of ATP as neurotransmitter.<ref>"MI_August_04_Vol4_No4 copy.indd" (PDF). Retrieved 2018-07-30.</ref><ref>Ferry, Georgina (2020-06-19). "Geoffrey Burnstock obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-07-16.</ref>

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Robert Cailliau (1947–): Belgian informatics engineer and computer scientist who, together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, developed the World Wide Web.<ref>Cailliau, Robert. "Atheism". www.cailliau.org. Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2016-10-20. As Richard Dawkins points out, I have no obligation to explain why I am an atheist, it's for those who believe in a god to supply evidence. Atheism, religion, science and ethics are linked: Religion provides a simple world view based on the existence of one or more gods. Gods are super-beings who are unscrutable, far superior to humans and endowed with supernatural powers. Such a world view starts from the axiom that humans will not be able to understand the world around them. There is no further argument possible: one lives "by the book".</ref>
Sir Paul Callaghan Template:Post-nominals (1947–2012): New Zealand physicist who, as the founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Victoria University of Wellington, held the position of Alan MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences and was President of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.<ref>The Telegraph – Professor Sir Paul Callaghan https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/9169952/Professor-Sir-Paul-Callaghan.html "Callaghan was brought up a Methodist, but showed a typically scientific interest in other faiths, trying out Anglicanism, Catholicism and Marxism, before finally settling for atheism."</ref>
Sean B. Carroll (1960–): American evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer. He is the Allan Wilson Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.<ref>"Sean B. Carroll – Freedom from Religion Foundation".</ref>
Sean M. Carroll (1966–): American cosmologist and theoretical physicist specializing in dark energy and general relativity.<ref>Carroll, Sean "Science and Religion Can't Be Reconciled. Why I won't take money from the Templeton Foundation." Slate. May 9, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2015.</ref>
Raymond Cattell (1905–1998): British and American psychologist, known for his psychometric research into intrapersonal psychological structure and his exploration of many areas within empirical psychology. Cattell authored, co-authored, or edited almost 60 scholarly books, more than 500 research articles, and over 30 standardized psychometric tests, questionnaires, and rating scales and was among the most productive, but controversial psychologists of the 20th century.<ref>Michael Martin (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 9780521842709. "Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Raymond B. Cattell..."</ref>
James Chadwick (1891–1974): English physicist. He won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron.<ref>Andrew Brown (1997). The neutron and the bomb: a biography of Sir James Chadwick. Oxford University Press. p. 362. ISBN 978-0-19-853992-6. He was a lifelong atheist and felt no need to develop religious faith as he approached the end of his life.</ref>
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995): Indian-American astrophysicist known for his theoretical work on the structure and evolution of stars. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983.<ref>"In his later years, Chandra had openly admitted to being an atheist which also meant that he subscribed to no religion in the customary sense of the word." Vishveshwara, C. V., 2000. Leaves from an unwritten diary: S. Chandrasekhar, Reminiscences and Reflections, Current Science, 78(8):1025–1033.</ref><ref>Kameshwar C. Wali (1991). Chandra: A Biography of Chandrasekhar. University of Chicago Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-226-87055-7. SC: I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist.</ref><ref>"Interview with Dr. S. Chandrasekhar". American Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on 2015-02-02. Retrieved 2017-01-10.</ref>
Georges Charpak (1924–2010): French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.<ref>"Georges Charpak". NNDB.com. Retrieved 17 July 2012.</ref><ref>Charpak, Georges, and Henri Broch. Debunked!: ESP, telekinesis, and other pseudoscience. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U Press, 2004. Print.</ref>
Boris Chertok (1912–2011): Prominent Soviet and Russian rocket designer, responsible for control systems of a number of ballistic missiles and spacecraft. He was the author of a four-volume book Rockets and People, the definitive source of information about the history of the Soviet space program.<ref>Chertok, B. E. Rockets and people. Washington, D.C.: NASA, 2005. Print. "I have always considered myself a diehard atheist and materialist..."</ref>
William Kingdon Clifford FRS (1845–1879): English mathematician and philosopher, co-introducer of geometric algebra, the first to suggest that gravitation might be a manifestation of an underlying geometry, and coiner of the expression "mind-stuff".<ref>John Snygg (2011). A New Approach to Differential Geometry Using Clifford's Geometric Algebra. Springer. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-8176-8282-8. However, the dogmatic position of the Anglican Church against Darwin's theory of evolution induced him to reexamine his beliefs. He soon evolved into an agnostic and then an atheist.</ref>
Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010): American physicist who invented the W70 warhead and is generally credited as the father of the neutron bomb.<ref>Gal Beckerman (January 26, 2011). "Creator of Neutron Bomb Leaves an Explosive Legacy". Forward Association, Inc. As for his own Jewish identity, Cohen was an avowed atheist who was cremated after he died, against Jewish tradition. But still he was proud of being Jewish, his daughter said, and even had a kind of "arrogant attitude" about Jewish intelligence.</ref>
John Horton Conway (1937–2020): British mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He is best known for the invention of the cellular automaton called Conway's Game of Life.<ref>"Conway propped up the pillow behind his head and grinned. "I like showing off. When I make a new discovery, and I really like telling people about it. I guess I'm not so much a mathematician as a teacher. In America, kids aren't supposed to like mathematics. It's so sad.' Conway sat up suddenly. 'Most people think that mathematics is cold. But it's not at all! For me, the whole damn thing is sensual and exciting. I like what it looks like, and I get a hell of a lot more pleasure out of math than most people do out of art!' He relaxed slightly, and he lowered his voice. 'I feel like an artist. I like beautiful things – they're there already; man doesn't have to create it. I don't believe in God, but I believe that nature is unbelievably subtle and clever. In physics, for instance, the real answer to a problem is usually so subtle and surprising that it wasn't even considered in the first place. That the speed of light is a constant – impossible! Nobody even thought about it. And quantum mechanics is even worse, but it's so beautiful, and it works!"", John Horton Conway in an interview with Charles Seife, The Sciences (1994).</ref>
Sir John Cornforth FRS, FAA (1917–2013): Australian–British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions.<ref>Kroto, Harold (2015). "Sir John Cornforth ('Kappa'): Some Personal Recollections". Australian Journal of Chemistry. 68 (4): 697–698. doi:10.1071/CH14601.</ref>
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929): Polish linguist and Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations.<ref>"Baudouin de Courtenay – The Anatomy of Language". Culture.pl. Retrieved 2022-10-01.</ref>
Jerry Coyne (1949–): American evolutionary biologist and professor, known for his books on evolution and commentary on the intelligent design debate.<ref>"Yet they [the NCSE] can afford to ignore us because, in the end, where else can we atheists go for support against creationists? [...] Am I grousing because, as an atheist and a non-accommodationist, my views are simply ignored by the NAS and NCSE? Not at all. I don't want these organizations to espouse or include my viewpoint. I want religion and atheism left completely out of all the official discourse of scientific societies and organizations that promote evolution." Jerry Coyne, 'Truckling to the Faithful: A Spoonful of Jesus Helps Darwin Go Down', April 22, 2009 (accessed 23 April 2009).</ref>
Francis Crick (1916–2004): English molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist; noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.<ref>Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: a Personal View of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books reprint edition, 1990, ISBN 0-465-09138-5, p. 145.</ref><ref>"How I Got Inclined Towards Atheism". Positiveatheism.org. Archived from the original on 2012-05-21. Retrieved 2012-06-03.</ref><ref>Mark Steyn identify Crick as an atheist. See: The Twentieth-Century Darwin by Mark Steyn, published in The Atlantic Monthly, October 2004.</ref><ref>"Francis Crick was an evangelical atheist."Francis Crick's Legacy for Neuroscience: Between the α and the Ω</ref><ref>"Instead, it is interlaced with descriptions of Crick's vacations, parties and assertions of atheism — occasionally colorful stuff that drains the intellectual drama from the codebreaking."Genome Human</ref><ref>"There is Crick the mentor, Crick the atheist, Crick the free-thinker, and Crick the playful."Entertaining Dr Crick</ref><ref>Crick, 86, said: "The god hypothesis is rather discredited." Do our genes reveal the hand of God?</ref>
George Washington Crile (1864–1943): American surgeon. Crile is now formally recognized as the first surgeon to have succeeded in a direct blood transfusion.<ref>"George Washington Crile". The Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2002. Retrieved 10 September 2012. Although both parents were English Lutherans, Crile, after reading Paine, Ingersoll, and Voltaire in his college years, became a lifelong atheist, devoted to the concept of intellectual freedom.</ref>
Pierre Curie (1859–1906): French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".<ref>Warren Allen Smith (2000). Who's who in hell: a handbook and international directory for humanists, freethinkers, naturalists, rationalists, and non-theists. Barricade Books. p. 259. ISBN 978-1-56980-158-1. Retrieved 4 February 2017. Curie, Pierre (1859–1906) A codiscoverer of radium, Pierre Curie was an atheist.</ref>

D

Sir Howard Dalton FRS (1944–2008): British microbiologist, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from March 2002 to September 2007.<ref>"She advised him that he risked being called up, and suggested an unusual way to avoid the draft – by becoming a priest, one of the categories exempt from military service. Dalton discovered a little-known religious group called the Universal Life Church of California which for $25 would "ordain" anyone. He duly sent off a cheque and within days was delighted to learn that he was now a bona fide Minister of Religion. It became a running joke and his friends frequently addressed letters to the Reverend Howard Dalton; as a life-long atheist, he particularly relished the irony of his new title." 'Obituary of Professor Sir Howard Dalton, Microbiologist who became Defra's Chief Scientific Adviser just after the foot-and-mouth outbreak', Daily Telegraph January 15, 2008, Pg. 25.</ref>
Richard Dawkins (1941–): English evolutionary biologist, creator of the concept of the meme; outspoken atheist and populariser of science, author of The God Delusion and founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.<ref>Dawkins identifies himself as an atheist in his article "A Challenge to Atheists: Come Out of the Closet," Free Inquiry, Summer 2002. Excerpt reprinted at Positiveatheism.org Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine</ref>
Christian de Duve (1917–2013): Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, the peroxisome and lysosome, for which he shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Albert Claude and George E. Palade ("for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell"). In addition to discovering and naming the peroxisome and lysosome, on a single occasion in 1963 he coined the scientific terms "autophagy", "endocytosis", and "exocytosis".<ref>Michael Ruse (2010). "Introductory Essay for Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning". International Society for Science & Religion. Retrieved 18 November 2013.</ref><ref>John Farrell (5 August 2013). "A Nobel Laureate And Proponent Of Original Sin". Forbes. Retrieved 18 November 2013.</ref><ref>"Nobel-winning cancer researcher ends his own life". ABC. 7 May 2013. Retrieved 18 November 2013.</ref><ref>Martin Childs (14 May 2013). "Christian de Duve: Authority on cell mechanisms". The Independent. London. Retrieved 18 November 2013.</ref>
Wander Johannes de Haas (1878–1960): Dutch physicist and mathematician who is best known for the Shubnikov–de Haas effect, the de Haas–van Alphen effect and the Einstein–de Haas effect.<ref>Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. A Biography (2005) – Dirk van Delft The man of absolute zero – https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&u=http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/delf006heik01_01/delf006heik01_01_0038.php&prev=search "which prevented the atheist De Haas had nothing to do with the Catholic piety of Keesom."</ref>
Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871): British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous.<ref>John Beloff (1997). Parapsychology: A Concise History. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 47. ISBN 9780312173760. "He seems an unlikely convert considering that his atheistic views had debarred him from a position at Oxford or Cambridge but his involvement with spiritualism was partly due to his wife, Sophia."</ref><ref>"There is a word in our language with which I shall not confuse this subject, both on account of the dishonourable use which is frequently made of it, as an imputation thrown by one sect upon another, and of the variety of significations attached to it. I shall use the world Anti-Deism to signify the opinion that there does not exist a Creator who made and sustains the Universe." Augustus De Morgan, An essay on probabilities: and on their application to life contingencies and insurance offices (1838), page 22.</ref><ref>Memoir of Augustus De Morgan. Longmans, Green, and Company. 1882. p. 393. "So you called me an atheist vagabond, fancying that Voltaire was an atheist : he was, in fact, theistic to bigotry, and anti-revolutionist to the same extent."</ref>
Arnaud Denjoy (1884–1974): French mathematician, noted for his contributions to harmonic analysis and differential equations.<ref>"Denjoy was an atheist, but tolerant of others' religious views; he was very interested in philosophical, psychological, and social issues." "Denjoy, Arnaud", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 17, p. 219. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.</ref>
David Deutsch (1953–): Israeli-British quantum physicist at the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by being the first person to formulate a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer.<ref>"First of all, I do not believe in the supernatural, so I take it for granted that consciousness has a material explanation. I also do not believe in insoluble problems, therefore I believe that this explanation is accessible in principle to reason, and that one day we will understand consciousness just as we today understand what life is, whereas once this was a deep mystery." David Deutsch in an interview with Philosophy Now magazine, Philosophy Now, December/January 2001 issue.</ref>
William G. Dever (1933–): American archaeologist, specialising in the history of Israel and the Near East in biblical times.<ref>Dever, William G. (January 2003). "Contra Davies". The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved 2007-02-12.</ref>
Jared Diamond (1937–): American geographer, historian, and author best known for his popular science books.<ref>"Jared Diamond: A dispassionate look at religion over the course of history". UCLA.</ref>
Paul Dirac (1902–1984): British theoretical physicist, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, predicted the existence of antimatter, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.<ref>Werner Heisenberg recollects a friendly conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay Conference about Einstein's and Planck's views on religion. Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac took part in it. Among other things, Dirac said: "I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest – and as scientists honesty is our precise duty – we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination.[...] I do not recognize any religious myth, at least because they contradict one another.[...]" Pauli jokingly said: "Well, I'd say that also our friend Dirac has got a religion and the first commandment of this religion is: God does not exist and Paul Dirac is his prophet." Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations. New York: Harper & Row. 1972. ISBN 0-06-131622-9.</ref><ref name="Pauling">"... I [Pauling] am not, however, militant in my atheism. The great English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac is a militant atheist. I suppose he is interested in arguing about the existence of God. I am not. It was once quipped that there is no God and Dirac is his prophet." Linus Pauling & Daisaku Ikeda (1992). A Lifeling Quest for Peace: A Dialogue. Jones & Bartlett. p. 22. ISBN 0-86720-277-7.</ref><ref>Helge Kragh (1990). Dirac: A Scientific Biography. Cambridge University Press. pp. 256–257. ISBN 978-0-521-38089-8.</ref><ref>Sara Lippincott (August 30, 2009). "The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom' by Graham Farmelo". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 9 June 2012. Dirac was contemptuous of philosophy and, as many scientists do, professed atheism. But it was a narrow sort, mainly dismissive of religious orthodoxy. In notes he wrote in 1933, he embraces another creed: "[T]his article of faith is that the human race will continue to live for ever and will develop and progress without limit . . . Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress."</ref><ref>Helen Brown (23 Jan 2009). "The Strangest Man: the Hidden Life of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo". The Telegraph. Retrieved 9 June 2012. He died in 1984, aged 82. An atheist, he was buried under a gravestone chosen by Manci. It read "because God said it should be so".</ref><ref>H. B. G. Casimir (2010). Haphazard Reality: Half a Century of Science. Amsterdam University Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-90-8964-200-4. Kramers was certainly not a dogmatic atheist like, for instance, Dirac in his younger years, whose attitude was summed up by Pauli in one famous sentence: "Our friend Dirac has a religion; and the main tenet of that religion is: 'There is no God and Dirac was his prophet.</ref>
Carl Djerassi (1923–2015): Austrian-born Bulgarian-American chemist, novelist, and playwright best known for his contribution to the development of oral contraceptive pills. He also developed Pyribenzamine (tripelennamine), his first patent and one of the first commercial antihistamines<ref>"Carl Djerassi: The Steroid King." Carl Djerassi: The Steroid King. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2016. His parents were both Jewish, but although young Carl was bar mitzvahed, the family was not religiously observant. He characterizes himself as a "Jewish atheist."</ref>
Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896): German physician and physiologist, the discoverer of nerve action potential, and the father of experimental electrophysiology.<ref>Michel Meulders (2010). "5: Helmholtz and the Understanding of Nature". In Laurence Garey (ed.). Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience. MIT Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-262-01448-9. Du Bois-Reymond was a self-proclaimed atheist but more through intimate conviction than logical necessity.</ref>
Eugene Dynkin (1924–2014): Soviet and American mathematician. He has made contributions to the fields of probability and algebra, especially semisimple Lie groups, Lie algebras, and Markov processes. The Dynkin diagram, the Dynkin system, and Dynkin's lemma are named after him.<ref>Conversation of Eugene Dynkin with Sergei Kuznetsov, Ithaca, New York, July 25, 1999 http://dynkincollection.library.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/Dynkin%20and%20Kuznetsov%20July%2025,%201999-Final%20English%20transcript_0.pdf "I realized that the existence of God is not supported by scientific evidence and became an atheist."</ref>

E

Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933): Austrian and Dutch theoretical physicist, who made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem.<ref>Ronald Clark (2011). Einstein: The Life and Times. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4482-0270-6. That Einstein's attitude was the result more of muddle than agnostic scruple seems clear from a letter which he wrote less than two years later when Paul Ehrenfest ruled himself out from becoming Einstein's successor by roundly declaring himself an atheist.</ref><ref>Thomas Levenson (2004). Einstein in Berlin. Random House of Canada. p. 172. ISBN 978-0-553-37844-3. The man he had hoped would succeed him in Prague, Paul Ehrenfest, refused to compromise his true atheist's principles. Einstein scolded him. "Your refusal to acknowledge a religious affiliation" was just this side of "willful stupidity," he assured him, with the benefit of recent experience. Once he became a professor Ehrenfest could revert to unbelief.</ref>
Albert Ellis (1913–2007): American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.<ref>Nielsen, Stevan Lars & Ellis, Albert. (1994). "A discussion with Albert Ellis: Reason, emotion and religion", Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 13(4), Win 1994. pp. 327–341</ref>
Paul Erdős (1913–1996): Hungarian mathematician. He published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.<ref>Colm Mulcahy (2013-03-26). "Centenary of Mathematician Paul Erdős – Source of Bacon Number Concept". Huffington Post. Retrieved 13 April 2013. In his own words, "I'm not qualified to say whether or not God exists. I kind of doubt He does. Nevertheless, I'm always saying that the SF has this transfinite Book that contains the best proofs of all mathematical theorems, proofs that are elegant and perfect...You don't have to believe in God, but you should believe in the Book." (SF was his tongue- in-cheek reference to God as "the Supreme Fascist").</ref>
Daniel Everett (1951–): American linguistic anthropologist and author best known for his study of the Amazon Basin's Pirahã people and their language.<ref>Barkham, Patrick (10 November 2008). "The power of speech". The Guardian. London.</ref>
Hugh Everett III (1930–1982): American physicist who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation.<ref>"Everett was a life-long atheist, but he did not let that stand in his way as St. John's was well-regarded academically and socially." Peter Byrne, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family (2010), page 29.</ref>
Hans Eysenck (1916–1997): German psychologist and author who is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas. He was the founding editor of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and authored about 80 books and more than 1600 journal articles.<ref>Michael Martin (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-0-521-84270-9. Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Hans Jürgen Eysenck...</ref>

F

File:Richard Feynman Nobel.jpg

Richard Feynman

Gustav Fechner (1801–1887): German experimental psychologist. An early pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics.<ref>"The study of medicine also contributed to a loss of religious faith and to becoming atheist." Michael Heidelberger, Nature from within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and his psychophysical worldview, page 21.</ref>
Leon Festinger (1919–1989): American social psychologist famous for his Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.<ref>"Festinger, a professed atheist, was an original thinker and a restless, highly motivated individual with (in his words) "little tolerance for boredom". " Franz Samelson: "Festinger, Leon", American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000 (accessed April 28, 2008) [1].</ref>
Richard Feynman (1918–1988): American theoretical physicist, best known for his work in renormalizing Quantum electrodynamics (QED) and his path integral formulation of quantum mechanics . He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.<ref>Denis Brian (2008). The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries. Basic Books. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-465-01139-1. Interviewer: Do you call yourself an agnostic or an atheist? Feynman: An atheist. Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this.</ref><ref>Feynman was of Jewish birth, but described himself as "an avowed atheist" by his early youth in Freethought of the Day, Freedom From Religion Foundation, May 11, 2006.</ref><ref>"Having abandoned the tenets of Judaism at 13, he never wavered in his gentle atheism, nor in his determination to stay away from matters about which he had opinions but no expertise." John Morrish reviewing the collection of Feynman's letters Don't You Have Time to Think?, "Particle Physics: The Route to Pop Stardom", Independent on Sunday (London), July 24, 2005, p. 21.</ref>
Irving Finkel (1951–): British philologist, Assyriologist, and the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, where he specialises in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia.<ref>Gore, Will (12 March 2014). "How the ark changed shape". The Catholic Herald. Retrieved 12 March 2020.^{[permanent dead link]}</ref><ref>"Real Drawings: Tablets of Clay and Afterwards". Retrieved 27 November 2018.</ref>
Sir Raymond Firth CNZM, FBA (1901–2002): New Zealand ethnologist, considered to have singlehandedly created a form of British economic anthropology.<ref>"His Methodist upbringing soon turned into a thoroughgoing humanistic atheism. This freed him for the sympathetic study of exotic religions, and for discussions of the role of faith in the anthropologist's own perceptions. He tended to feel a sort of good-natured intolerance of the religious beliefs of his friends and colleagues." Obituary: Professor Sir Raymond Firth, The Times (London), February 26, 2002.</ref>
Helen Fisher (1945–): American biological anthropologist and member of the Center For Human Evolutionary Studies at Rutgers University.<ref>"This is Your Brain on Sex".</ref>
James Franck (1882–1964): German physicist. Won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925.<ref>"James Franck was born in Hamburg, the son of a Jewish banker. ...As he said, science was his God and nature his religion. He did not insist that his daughters attend religious instruction classes (Religionsunterricht) in school. But he was very proud of his Jewish heritage..." David Nachmansohn, German-Jewish pioneers in science, 1900–1933: highlights in atomic physics, chemistry, and biochemistry, page 62.</ref>
Carlos Frenk (1951–): Mexican-British cosmologist and the Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University, whose main interests lie in the field of cosmology, studying galaxy formation and computer simulations of cosmic structure formation.<ref>"Sense About Science Blog". Sense About Science Blog.</ref>
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): Austrian neurologist known as the father of psychoanalysis.<ref>"[Freud and Jung] were close for several years, but Jung's ambition, and his growing commitment to religion and mysticism — most unwelcome to Freud, an aggressive atheist — finally drove them apart." Sigmund Freud, by Peter Gay, The TIME 100: The Most Important People of the Century.</ref>
Jerome Isaac Friedman (1930–): American physicist who won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Henry Kendall and Richard Taylor, for work showing an internal structure for protons later known to be quarks.<ref>"Nobel laureate Friedman: Time travel is not possible." Merinews. Web. 15 Jan. 2017. <http://www.merinews.com/article/nobel-laureate-friedman-time-travel-is-not-possible/153326.shtml Archived 2017-12-07 at the Wayback Machine>. "An atheist himself, Friedman refused to answer theological questions..."</ref>
Christer Fuglesang (1957–): Swedish astronaut and physicist.<ref>Atlantseglaren från Bromma vill tänja gränsen mot rymden Archived 2007-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, Dagens Nyheter, December 10, 2006.</ref>

G

George Gamow (1904–1968): Russian-born theoretical physicist and cosmologist. An early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory.<ref>ANDERSON: "What, uh, one thing I'm fascinated with is, of course, George Gamow left the university in '59 [1956], and Edward Teller had left in 1946 [1945] and went to the University of Chicago. But do you have any recollections of maybe some of the, anything between Dr. Marvin and Dr. Gamow, as far as, just before he left and went to Colorado?" NAESER: "Ah, no, I don't know of any. I know Gamow made no, never did hide the fact that he was an atheist, but whether that came into the picture, I don't know. But the story around the university was that Gamow and Mrs. Gamow were divorced, but they were in the same social circles some of the time, he thought it was better to get out of Washington. That's why he went to Ohio State." The George Washington University and Foggy Bottom Historical Encyclopedia, Gamow, George and Edward Teller Archived 2010-06-13 at the Wayback Machine, October 23, 1996.</ref><ref>Grote Reber. "The Big Bang Is Bunk" (PDF). 21st Century Science Associates. p. 44. Retrieved 28 May 2012. After the initial mathematical work on relativity the ory had been done, the Big Bang theory itself was invented by a Belgian priest, Georges lemaitre, im proved upon by an avowed atheist, George Gamow, and is now all but universally accepted by those who hold advanced degrees in astronomy and the physical sciences, despite its obvious absurdity.</ref><ref>Simon Singh (2010). Big Bang. HarperCollins UK. ISBN 978-0-00-737550-9. Surprisingly, the atheist George Gamow enjoyed the Papal attention given to his field of research.</ref><ref>Jane Gregory (2005). "Fighting for space". Fred Hoyle's Universe. Oxford University Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-19-157846-5. Gamow was, like Hoyle, an atheist, but he was familiar with organized religion: his grandfather was the Metropolitan, the senior bishop, of Odessa Cathedral.</ref>
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1772–1850): French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for two laws related to gases.^{[citation needed]}
Ivar Giaever (1929–): Norwegian-American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson "for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids". Giaever is an institute professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, and the president of Applied Biophysics.<ref>Giaever, Ivar (November 2016). "I Am The Smartest Man I Know": A Nobel Laureate's Difficult Journey. World Scientific. Bibcode:2017smik.book.....G. ISBN 978-981-3109-17-9.</ref>
Sheldon Glashow (1932–): American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory.<ref>Victor M. Amela (June 20, 2017). "Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Prize in physics for the electroweak theory" (PDF). La Contra – La Vanguardia. Retrieved 8 October 2018. I am a practising atheist.</ref>
Camillo Golgi (1843–1926): Italian physician, biologist, pathologist, scientist, and Nobel laureate. Several structures and phenomena in anatomy and physiology are named for him, including the Golgi apparatus, the Golgi tendon organ and the Golgi tendon reflex. He is recognized as the greatest neuroscientist and biologist of his time.<ref>Paolo Mazzarello; Henry A. Buchtel; Aldo Badiani (1999). The hidden structure: a scientific biography of Camillo Golgi. Oxford University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-19-852444-1. It was probably during this period that Golgi became agnostic (or even frankly atheistic), remaining for the rest of his life completely alien to the religious experience.</ref><ref>Rapport, Richard L. Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Print.</ref>
Herb Grosch (1918–2010): Canadian-American computer scientist, perhaps best known for Grosch's law, which he formulated in 1950.<ref>Grosch, Herbert (July 15, 1970). "Smithsonian National Museum of American History – Computer Oral History Collection, 1969–1973, 1977 – Interview with Herbert R. Grosch" (PDF). Retrieved 12 April 2012. I made them quit essentially. When I was nine years old I decided that I was an atheist. So I told them, "Well you shouldn't go to church anymore, it's silly." Well, apparently they'd been going to church primarily for my benefit. So after I refused to go, they quit going too.</ref>
David Gross (1941–): American theoretical physicist and string theorist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-discovery of asymptotic freedom.<ref>Krauss, Lawrence Maxwell. Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by Way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and the Twilight Zone). New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.</ref><ref>"Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 15-10-01". www.hri.org.</ref><ref>"Notable Signers". Humanism and Its Aspirations. American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on October 5, 2012. Retrieved October 2, 2012.</ref>

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Jacques Hadamard (1865–1963): French mathematician who made major contributions in number theory, complex function theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations.<ref>Shaposhnikova, T. O. (1999). Jacques Hadamard: A Universal Mathematician. American Mathematical Soc. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-0-8218-1923-4. In 1924, Hadamard recounted his meetings with Hermite: "...When Hermite loved to direct to me remarks such as: "He who strays from the paths traced by Providence crashes." These were the words of a profoundly religious man, but an atheist like me understood them very well, especially when he added at other times: "In mathematics, our role is more that of servant than master.""</ref>
Jonathan Haidt (c.1964–): Associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, focusing on the psychological bases of morality across different cultures, and author of The Happiness Hypothesis.<ref>"Religions are technologies that are evolved over millennia to do this and many religions are very effective in doing this. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that gods actually exist, but I part company with the New Atheists because I believe that religion is an adaptation that generally works quite well to suppress selfishness, to create moral communities, to help people work together, trust each other and collaborate towards common ends." Jonathan Haidt, Interview with Jonathan Haidt Archived 2008-12-06 at the Wayback Machine, Vox Popoli November 19, 2007 (accessed April 14, 2008).</ref>
J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964): British polymath well known for his works in physiology, genetics and evolutionary biology. He was also a mathematician making innovative contributions to statistics and biometry education in India. Haldane was also the first to construct human gene maps for haemophilia and colour blindness on the X chromosome and he was one of the first people to conceive abiogenesis.<ref>Haldane, J. B. S., Fact and Faith. London: London, Watts & Co., 1934.</ref>
Alan Hale (1958–): American professional astronomer, who co-discovered Comet Hale–Bopp, and specializes in the study of sun-like stars and the search for extra-solar planetary systems, and has side interests in the fields of comets and near-Earth asteroids.<ref>"Internet Infidels Honorary Board". Archived from the original on August 7, 2017. Retrieved September 15, 2016.</ref>
Sir James Hall (1761–1832): Scottish geologist and chemist, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.<ref>" 'Unequalled stability and sweetness of disposition' are said to have been among his domestic virtues, while in politics and religion he was 'a declared democrat and avowed atheist' (The Times)." Jean Jones: 'Hall, Sir James, of Dunglass, fourth baronet (1761–1832)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, October 2006 (accessed May 1, 2008).</ref>
G. Stanley Hall (1846–1924): Pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University.<ref>Martin, Michael, ed. (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-1-1398-2739-3.</ref>
Beverly Halstead (1933–1991): British paleontologist and populariser of science.<ref>"He and the Bishop of Oxford staged another version of the great debate between Thomas Henry ('Darwin's bulldog') Huxley and Bishop ('Soapy Sam') Wilberforce that followed the publication of Darwin's Origin Of Species. The present Bishop defended the new Darwinian orthodoxy, but Dr Halstead, an atheist, took the line that the former Bishop of Oxford had been quite right to oppose Darwin's thesis. But that too was entirely characteristic. He told me that he was a member of the Athenaeum only because it had a painting of Darwin in the lobby." Tim Radford, 'A passion for dinosaurs: Obituary of Beverly Halstead', The Guardian (London), May 2, 1991.</ref>
Gerhard Armauer Hansen (1841–1912): Norwegian physician, remembered for his identification of the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae in 1873 as the causative agent of leprosy.<ref>Biography of Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen whonamedit.com</ref><ref>Gerhard Armauer Hansen (1814–1912) Archived 2016-12-23 at the Wayback Machine Journal of the Association of Physicians of India, vol 63, March, 2015</ref>
G. H. Hardy (1877–1947): Prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis.<ref>"Hardy... was a stringent atheist..." Hit Play on Ramanujan Archived 2007-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, by Lisa Drostova, East Bay Express, April 30, 2003. Retrieved October 7, 2007.</ref><ref>"The first Bombe to be delivered was named Agnus by Turing: a joke that atheist Hardy might have made..." Alan Turing — a Cambridge Scientific Mind, by Andrew Hodges, Cambridge Scientific Minds (Cambridge University Press, 2002) Retrieved July 2, 2007.</ref>
Herbert A. Hauptman (1917–2011): American mathematician. Along with Jerome Karle, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985.<ref>

"Outside the field of scientific research, he was known for his outspoken atheism: belief in God, he once declared, is not only incompatible with good science, but is "damaging to the wellbeing of the human race." " The Telegraph. [2]</ref>

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018): British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.<ref>Boyett, Jason. "Stephen Hawking says there's no creator God; the twitterverse reacts", The Washington Post, September 3, 2010, Retrieved April 25, 2011.</ref>
Ewald Hering (1834–1918): German physiologist who did much research into color vision, binocular perception and eye movements. He proposed opponent color theory in 1892.<ref>"Ernst Mach". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May 21, 2008. Retrieved 4 September 2012. Hering and Mach were atheists, and disbelieved in a soul, but still accepted the idea that nature had internal direction.</ref><ref>David Edwards (Sep 24, 2014). "Stephen Hawking comes out: 'I'm an atheist' because science is 'more convincing' than God". Raw Story. Archived from the original on 3 October 2014. Retrieved 25 September 2014.</ref>
Peter Higgs (1929–): British theoretical physicist, recipient of the Dirac Medal and Prize, known for his prediction of the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle".<ref>"Officially, the particle is called the Higgs boson, but its elusive nature and fundamental role in the creation of the universe led a prominent scientist to rename it the God particle. The name has stuck, but makes Higgs wince and raises the hackles of other theorists. "I wish he hadn't done it," he says. "I have to explain to people it was a joke. I'm an atheist, but I have an uneasy feeling that playing around with names like that could be unnecessarily offensive to people who are religious." Ian Sample, 'The God of Small Things', The Guardian, November 17, 2007, Weekend pages, Pg. 44.</ref> He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.
Roald Hoffmann (1937–): American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.<ref>Liberato Cardellini: "A final and more personal question: You defined yourself as "an atheist who is moved by religion". Looking at the tenor of your life and the many goals you have achieved, one wonders where your inner force comes from." Roald Hoffmann: "The atheism and the respect for religion come form [sic] the same source. I observe that in every culture on Earth, absolutely every one, human beings have constructed religious systems. There is a need in us to try to understand, to see that there is something that unites us spiritually. So scientists who do not respect religion fail in their most basic task—observation. Human beings need the spiritual. The same observation reveals to me a multitude of religious constructions—gods of nature, spirits, the great monotheistic religions. It seems to me there can't be a God or gods; there are just manifestations of a human-constructed spirituality." Liberato Cardellini, Looking for Connections: An Interview with Roald Hoffmann^{[permanent dead link]}, page 1634.</ref>
Lancelot Hogben (1895–1975): English experimental zoologist and medical statistician, now best known for his popularising books on science, mathematics and language.<ref>"A reader who has suffered me so far will have realised how much of my mental energy had been hitherto absorbed in a fruitless search for an intellectually compelling rationale to rescue some fragments from the wreckage of my family faith. The mood of liberation I experienced when I finally discarded the last remnant of theism was no less exhilarating than that of Bunyan's Pilgrim when the burden of sin fell from his back. [...] In retrospect, the final steps seem as sudden as they were painless. [...] As I looked upward [at the night sky], I realised that the sole prospect was limitless expanse of unthreatening and impersonal emptiness — but for unapproachable galaxies — of a universe without purpose of punishment or reward for a lately arrived animal species, free to make or mar its own destiny without help or hindrance from above." Lancelot Hogben, Lancelot Hogben: Scientific Humanist: An Unauthorised Autobiography, edited by Adrian and Ann Hogben. Merlin Press, 1998.</ref>
Brigid Hogan FRS (1943–): British developmental biologist noted for her contributions to stem cell research and transgenic technology and techniques. She is the George Barth Geller Professor of Research in Molecular Biology and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University, as well as the director of the Duke Stem Cell Program.<ref>American Society for Cell Biology Member Profile https://www.ascb.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/brigid_hogan.pdf</ref>
Fred Hollows (1929–1993): New Zealand and Australian ophthalmologist. He became known for his work in restoring eyesight for countless thousands of people in Australia and many other countries.<ref>Hildebrand, Joe (11 February 2008). "Fred Hollows remembered at ceremony in Bourke". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 May 2013.</ref>
Fred Hoyle (1915–2001): English astronomer noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally coined by him on BBC radio.<ref>Jane Gregory (2005). "Fighting for space". Fred Hoyle's Universe. Oxford University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-19-157846-5. According to Hoyle: "I am an atheist, but as far as blowing up the world in a nuclear war goes, I tell them not to worry."</ref>
Nicholas Humphrey (1943–): English neuropsychologist, working on consciousness and belief in the supernatural from a Darwinian perspective, and primatological research into Machiavellian intelligence theory.<ref>"He has worked with monkeys in laboratories and in the wild. He has been a media don, a campaigner against nuclear weapons and the holder of a chair in parapsychological research who was dedicated to debunking even the possibility of telepathy or survival after death. He is an atheist, and the man who suggested to Richard Dawkins the analogy of viruses of the mind for religions; yet nowadays he talks as if spirituality were the thing that makes us human." Andrew Brown interviewing Humphrey, 'A life in science: The human factor', The Guardian, July 29, 2006, Review Pages, Pg. 13.</ref>
Sir Julian Huxley FRS (1887–1975): English evolutionary biologist, a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis, Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund.<ref>"Despite his atheism Huxley could appreciate Teilhard de Chardin's vision of evolution, and like his grandfather T. H. Huxley he believed progress could be described in biological terms." Robert Olby, 'Huxley, Sir Julian Sorell (1887–1975)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edition, May 2007 (accessed May 2, 2008).</ref>

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Saiful Islam (1963–): British materials chemist, a Professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Bath and a recipient of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award.<ref>"Humanists UK Patron: Professor Saiful Islam".</ref>

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John Hughlings Jackson FRS (1835–1911): English neurologist. He is best known for his research on epilepsy. Jackson was one of the founders of the important Brain journal, which was dedicated to the interaction between experimental and clinical neurology (still being published today).<ref>"J. Hughlings Jackson". Nndb.com. Retrieved 2018-07-30.</ref><ref>Siegman, Aron Wolfe, and Stanley Feldstein. Nonverbal Behavior and Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1978. Print.</ref>
François Jacob (1920–2013): French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through feedback on transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff.<ref>Thomas Steven Molnar (1980). Theists and Atheists: A Typology of Non-belief. Walter de Gruyter. p. 59. ISBN 978-90-279-7788-5. The biologist Francois Jacob (who shared the Nobel Prize with Jacques Monod) admits that he is an atheist, but he finds, parallel to the material nature of the universe, another aspect — in man — which is not reductible to the first.</ref>
Donald Johanson (1943–): American paleoanthropologist, who's known for discovering – with Yves Coppens and Maurice Taieb – the fossil of a female hominin australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia.<ref name="1991 Awards">"CSICOP's 1991 Awards". Skeptical Inquirer. 16 (1): 16. 1991.</ref><ref>"Crowd loves Lucy scientific sleuth Johanson". ffrf.org.</ref>
Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900–1958): French physicist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1935.<ref name="Perrin, Francis p. 151">"Raised in a completely nonreligious family, Joliot never attended any church and was a thoroughgoing atheist all his life." Perrin, Francis: "Joliot, Frédéric", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 7 p. 151. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.</ref><ref>"Irène Joliot-Curie". Making the Modern World. 1956-03-17. Retrieved 2012-06-03.</ref>
Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956): French scientist. She is the daughter of Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. She along with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935.<ref name="Joliot-Curie, Irène">"It was to her grandfather, a convinced freethinker, that Irène owed her atheism, later politically expressed as anticlericalism." Joliot-Curie, Irène. Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 17 Mar. 2012.</ref><ref name="Denis Brian 389">Denis Brian (2005-08-01). The Curies: A Biography of the Most Controversial Family in Science. Wiley. p. 389. ISBN 978-0-471-27391-2. There were no prayers: Irene was deeply atheist.</ref>
Steve Jones (1944–): Welsh geneticist, professor of genetics and head of the biology department at University College London, and television presenter and a prize-winning author on biology, especially evolution; one of the best known contemporary popular writers on evolution.<ref>"Scientists in Britain, where the film will premiere at next month's London Film Festival, with general release in December, dismissed the intelligent design lobby's expropriation of the film. Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London and an atheist, said: 'I find it sad that people with intrinsically foolish viewpoints don't recognise this as a naturally beautiful film, but have to attach their absurd social agendas to it.' " David Smith, 'How the penguin's life story inspired the US religious right: Antarctic family values', The Observer, September 18, 2005, News Pages, Pg. 3.</ref><ref>On the side of the atheists were Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, [...] Jones, meanwhile, revealed that he would "love to believe in God", because it would offer some degree of comfort. But he said he stopped believing in God as a child as soon as he discovered that what he was learning in school biology classes conflicted with the kind of things he had been taught in Sunday school – like dinosaurs and humans walking the earth at the same time." If Darwin has really killed God, when was the funeral?', Guardian Unlimited, 13 May 2009 (accessed 26 May 2009).</ref>

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Daniel Kahneman (1934–): Israeli psychologist and behavioral economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making.<ref>Engber, Daniel (December 21, 2016). "How a Pioneer in the Science of Mistakes Ended Up Mistaken". Slate Magazine. It's a portrait of besotted opposites: Both Kahneman and Tversky were brilliant scientists, and atheist Israeli Jews...</ref>
Paul Kammerer (1880–1926): Austrian biologist who studied and advocated the now abandoned Lamarckian theory of inheritance – the notion that organisms may pass to their offspring characteristics they have acquired in their lifetime.<ref>"The Law of Serialitity". Retrieved 18 July 2012. The paradox is that he thought of himself as a hard-boiled philosophical materialist. He was also what one may call a devoted atheist; a freemason; a member of the Austrian Socialist Party; and a regular contributor to the Monisticshe Monatshelfe, the monthly published by the German league of Monists.</ref><ref>"Paul Kammerer". NNDB.com. Retrieved 18 July 2012.</ref>
Samuel Karlin (1924–2007): American mathematician. He did extensive work in mathematical population genetics.<ref>"Sam Karlin, mathematician who improved DNA analysis, dies". Stanford Report. January 16, 2008. Retrieved 21 April 2012. Karlin was born in Yonova, Poland, in 1924. His family immigrated to Chicago when he was a small child and struggled financially through the Great Depression. He was raised in a strict Orthodox Jewish household but broke with religion in his early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of his life.</ref>
Grete Kellenberger-Gujer (1919–2011): Swiss molecular biologist known for her discoveries on genetic recombination and restriction modification system of DNA. She was a pioneer in the genetic analysis of bacteriophages and contributed to the early development of molecular biology.<ref>Citi, Sandra; Berg, Douglas E. "Grete Kellenberger-Gujer: Molecular biology research pioneer". Bacteriophage. 6 (2): 1–12. doi:10.1080/21597081.2016.1173168. "Grete became an atheist and relinquished her affiliation to the Church"</ref>
Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956): American biologist, sexologist and professor of entomology and zoology.<ref>"Kinsey was also shown to be an atheist who loathed religion and its constraints on sex." 'Kinsey' critics ready, Cheryl Wetzstein, The Washington Times. Retrieved February 2, 2007.</ref>
Melanie Klein (1882–1960): Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that influenced child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis. She was a leading innovator in theorizing object relations theory.<ref>Michael Martin (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-0-521-84270-9. Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Melanie Klein...</ref>
Alfred Dillwyn Knox (1884–1943): British classics scholar and papyrologist at King's College, Cambridge, and a cryptologist. As a member of the World War I Room 40 codebreaking unit, he helped decrypt the Zimmermann Telegram, which brought the United States into the war. At the end of World War I, he joined the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) and on 25 July 1939, as Chief Cryptographer, participated in the Polish-French-British Warsaw meeting that disclosed Polish achievements, since December 1932, in the continuous breaking of German Enigma ciphers, thus kick-starting the British World War II Ultra operations at Bletchley Park.<ref>"Dillwyn [Knox, son of an Evangelical bishop] was from his student years an unwavering atheist." Alan Hollinghurst, "The Victory of Penelope Fitzgerald" (a review of Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald [a niece of Alfred Dillwyn Knox]: A Life, Knopf, 488 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 19 (December 4, 2014), p. 8. (The article comprises pp. 8, 10, 12.)</ref>
Damodar Kosambi (1907–1966): Indian mathematician, statistician, historian and polymath who contributed to genetics by introducing Kosambi's map function.<ref>Padgaonkar, D. (2013). Kosambi's uplifting idea Of India."Both were pious — his mother a Hindu, his father a Buddhist — while he himself remained an atheist."</ref>
Lawrence Krauss (1954–): American theoretical physicist, professor of physics at Arizona State University and popularizer of science. Krauss speaks regularly at atheist conferences such as Beyond Belief and Atheist Alliance International.<ref>"...I had the opportunity to participate in several exciting panel discussions at the World Science Festival in New York City. But the most dramatic encounter took place at the panel strangely titled 'Science, Faith and Religion.'... I ended up being one of two panelists labeled 'atheists.'..." God and Science Don't Mix: A scientist can be a believer. But professionally, at least, he can't act like one., Lawrence M. Krauss, The Wall Street Journal, page A15, 26 June 2009 (retrieved 22 May 2010). On the 21 June 2012 Colbert Report, the author of A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing told Colbert: "There is no evidence for any deity.... You don't need him.... There's no need for God." The evolutions of the universe occur "without any supernatural shenanigans."</ref><ref>"Lack of understanding is not evidence for God. It is evidence of lack of understanding, and a call to use reason to try and change that." Lawrence M. Krauss, "In Reason We Trust" notice of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Scientific American, vol. 315, no. 5 (November 2016), p. 19.</ref>
Harold Kroto (1939–2016): 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.<ref>Harold Kroto claims to have four "religions": humanism, atheism, amnesty-internationalism and humourism.[3]</ref>
Ray Kurzweil (1948–): American inventor, futurist, and author. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.<ref>"In his mythic book The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil, serial inventor, technology enthusiast, and unabashed atheist, announces: "Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation.... So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal."" – Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (2010).</ref>

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File:PaulLauterbur.jpg

Paul Lauterbur

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981): French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud".<ref>Michael Martin (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-0-521-84270-9. Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Jacques Lacan...</ref>
Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813): Italian mathematician and astronomer that made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.<ref>"Napoleon replies: "How comes it, then, that Laplace was an atheist? At the Institute neither he nor Monge, nor Berthollet, nor Lagrange believed in God. But they did not like to say so." Baron Gaspard Gourgaud, Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena with General Baron Gourgaud (1904), page 274.</ref>
Jérôme Lalande (1732–1807): French astronomer and writer.<ref>"He studied at the Jesuit College in Lyon and at this stage he nearly decided to join the Jesuit Order. In fact it was his parents who encouraged him to continue his education by going to Paris to study law, which he did. It is somewhat ironical that Lalande, who would later become renowned as an atheist, should have come so close to becoming a Jesuit." J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, Joseph-Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande Archived 2010-07-17 at the Wayback Machine</ref>
Lev Landau (1908–1968): Russian physicist. He received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of superfluidity.<ref>Henry F. Schaefer (2003). Science and Christianity: Conflict Or Coherence?. The Apollos Trust. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-9742975-0-7. I present here two examples of notable atheists. The first is Lev Landau, the most brilliant Soviet physicist of the twentieth century.</ref><ref>"Listed as an atheist in NNDB.com." Lev Landau, NNDB.com</ref><ref>James D. Patterson; Bernard C. Bailey (20 February 2019). Solid-State Physics: Introduction to the Theory. Lev Landau - The Soviet Grand Master: Springer. p. 190. ISBN 978-3-319-75322-5. Landau's theoretical minimum exam was famous and only about forty students passed it in his time. This was Landau's entry-level exam for theoretical physics. It contained what Landau felt was necessary to work in that field. Like many Soviet era physicists he was an atheist.</ref>
Alexander Langmuir (1910–1993): American epidemiologist. He is renowned for creating the Epidemic Intelligence Service.<ref>Pendergrast, Mark. Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Print. "She knew that her father was an atheist who did not believe in an afterlife..."</ref>
Paul Lauterbur (1929–2007): American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) possible.<ref>Dawson, M. Joan. Paul Lauterbur and the Invention of MRI. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013. Print. "Paul became an atheist, revering intellectual honesty and the quest for truth."</ref>
Richard Leakey (1944–2022): Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician.<ref>Leakey, Richard; Virginia Morell (September 2001). Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures. design by Kathryn Parise. Macmillan. p. 257. ISBN 0-312-20626-7.</ref>
Félix Le Dantec (1869–1917): French biologist and philosopher of science, noted for his work on bacteria.<ref>"Although an atheist, Le Dantec was always open to religious discussion. [...] Among his philosophical works are L'athéisme (Paris, 1907); " 'Le Dantec, Félix', Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 8. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008, p. 124.</ref>
Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018): American physicist who, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988 for their joint research on neutrinos.<ref>Babu Gogineni (July 10, 2012). "It's the Atheist Particle, actually". Postnoon News. Archived from the original on 11 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012. Leon Lederman is himself an atheist and he regrets the term, and Peter Higgs who is an atheist too, has expressed his displeasure, but the damage has been done!</ref>
Jean-Marie Lehn (1939–): French chemist. He received the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen.<ref>"It is a scene I won't forget in a hurry: Jean-Marie Lehn, French winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry, defending his atheism at a packed public conference at the new Alexandria Library in Egypt." Ehsan Masood, ProspectMagazine.co.uk, Islam's reformers Archived 2014-10-25 at the Wayback Machine, 22nd July 2006.</ref>
Sir John Leslie (1766–1832): Scottish mathematician and physicist best remembered for his research into heat; he was the first person to artificially produce ice, and gave the first modern account of capillary action.<ref>"In these years Leslie was an unsuccessful candidate for the chairs of natural philosophy at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow respectively. He failed at the former because he was then an extreme whig and an atheist who deplored the Erastianism of many of the Scottish clergy." Jack Morrell, 'Leslie, Sir John (1766–1832)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed May 2, 2008).</ref>
Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792–1856): Russian mathematician. Known for his works on hyperbolic geometry.<ref>Venjamin Fedorovič Kagan (1957). N. Lobachevsky and His Contribution to Science. Foreign Languages Publishing House. p. 29. Retrieved 4 February 2017.</ref><ref>Bardi, Jason (2008). The Fifth Postulate: How Unraveling a Two Thousand Year Old Mystery Unraveled the Universe. John Wiley & Sons. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-470-46736-7.</ref>
Jacques Loeb (1859–1924): German-born American physiologist and biologist.<ref>Rasmussen, Charles, and Rick Tilman. Jacques Loeb: His Science and Social Activism and Their Philosophical Foundations, Volume 229. N.p.: American Philosophical Society, 1998. Print. "An avowed atheist and materialist, he espoused secular humanism..."</ref><ref>Stout, Harry S., and D. G. Hart. New Directions in American Religious History. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. Loeb was a forthright atheist..."</ref>
H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins FRS (1923–2004): English theoretical chemist and a cognitive scientist.<ref>"By that time Longuet-Higgins had become a convinced atheist, although he still respected many of the features of the Church of England." John Murrell, 'Higgins, (Hugh) Christopher Longuet- (1923–2004)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, Oxford University Press, January 2008 (accessed May 1, 2008).</ref>

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Paul MacCready (1925–2007): American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the Kremer prize.<ref>"Paul MacCready, the inventor, defines it thus: "A secular humanist does not believe in God, and doesn't steal."" Paul Kurtz, Is Secular Humanism a Religion?.</ref>
Ernst Mach (1838–1916): Austrian physicist and philosopher. Known for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves.<ref>R. S. Cohen; Raymond J. Seeger (1975). Ernst Mach, Physicist and Philosopher. Springer. p. 158. ISBN 978-90-277-0016-2. And Mach, in personal conviction, was a socialist and an atheist.</ref><ref>Gregory Scott Charak (2007). Between Soul and Precision: Ernst Mach's Biological Empiricism and the Social Democratic Philosophy of Science. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-549-12973-8. Both make explicit claims against the pseudo-problems generated by materialism, and although Mach the atheist would have no gripe with "irreligion" per se, as a pacifist and a socialist he was indeed an ardent proponent of "peace.</ref><ref>Helge Kragh (2004). Matter And Spirit In The Universe: Scientific And Religious Preludes To Modern Cosmology. OECD Publishing. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-86094-469-7. The Austrian positivist physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach was nominally a Catholic, but in reality he was an atheist and strongly opposed to Christian doctrines.</ref>
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis FRS (1893–1972): Indian scientist and applied statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure and for being one of the members of the first Planning commission of free india. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India and founded the Indian Statistical Institute.<ref>"Development and Sentiment: The Political Thought of Nehru's India." King's College London. King's College London, n.d. Web. <https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/kii/documents/Bayly-lecture.pdf>.</ref>
Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910): Italian neurologist, physiologist and anthropologist, noted for his experimental investigation of coca leaves into its effects on the human psyche.<ref>Paolo Mantegazza, Ricordi politici di un fantaccino del Parlamento, Bemporad, 1896, p. 72.</ref>
Andrey Markov (1856–1922): Russian mathematician. He is best known for his work on stochastic processes.<ref>"Of course, Markov, an atheist and eventual excommunicate of the Church quarreled endlessly with his equally outspoken counterpart Nekrasov. The disputes between Markov and Nekrasov were not limited to mathematics and religion, they quarreled over political and philosophical issues as well." Gely P. Basharin, Amy N. Langville, Valeriy A. Naumov, The Life and Work of A. A. Markov, page 6.</ref><ref>Loren R. Graham; Jean-Michel Kantor (2009). Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity. Harvard University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-674-03293-4. Markov (1856–1922), on the other hand, was an atheist and a strong critic of the Orthodox Church and the tsarist government (Nekrasov exaggeratedly called him a Marxist).</ref>
Phil Mason (1972–): British chemist at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who is known for his online activities and YouTube career.<ref>Smith, Christopher; Cimino, Richard (21 February 2012). "Atheisms Unbound: The Role of the New Media in the Formation of a Secularist Identity". Secularism and Nonreligion. 1: 17. doi:10.5334/snr.ab. ISSN 2053-6712.</ref>
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970): American psychologist. He was a professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs.<ref>Michael Martin (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-0-521-84270-9. Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including G. Stanley Hall, John B. Watson, Carl R. Rogers...Abraham Maslow...Maslow was a second-generation atheist, and his father was a militant freethinker.</ref>
Hiram Stevens Maxim (1840–1916): American-born British inventor. He invented the Maxim gun, the first portable, fully automatic machine gun; and other devices, including an elaborate mousetrap.<ref>Joseph McCabe (1950). A rationalist encyclopaedia: a book of reference on religion, philosophy, ethics, and science (2 ed.). Watts. p. 384. Retrieved 4 February 2017. He was a member of the firm of Vickers' Sons and Maxim. Maxim was an aggressive Atheist (personal knowledge) and the compiler (with the present writer) of the collection of strong criticisms of religion...</ref><ref>The Freethinker, Volume 92. G.W. Foote. 1972. p. 45.</ref>
Ernst Mayr (1904–2005): Renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist. He was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists.<ref>"An appreciation of biologist Ernst Mayr (1904–2005)". Wsws.org. 2005-05-03. Retrieved 2012-06-03.</ref>
John McCarthy (1927–2011): American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He was responsible for the coining of the term "Artificial Intelligence" in his 1955 proposal for the 1956 Dartmouth Conference and was the inventor of the Lisp programming language.<ref>"Responding to Richard Dawkins's pestering his fellow atheists to "come out", I mention that I am indeed an atheist. To count oneself as an atheist one need not claim to have a proof that no gods exist. One need merely think that the evidence on the god question is in about the same state as the evidence on the werewolf question." [4]</ref><ref>"About John McCarthy". Stanford University. Archived from the original on October 4, 2013. Retrieved February 1, 2013.</ref><ref>McCarthy, John (March 7, 2003). "Commentary on World, US, and scientific affairs". Stanford University. Archived from the original on October 4, 2013. Retrieved February 1, 2013. By the way I'm an atheist.</ref>
Sir Peter Medawar (1915–1987): Nobel Prize-winning British scientist best known for his work on how the immune system rejects or accepts tissue transplants.<ref>"... I believe that a reasonable case can be made for saying, not that we believe in God because He exists but rather that He exists because we believe in Him. [...] Considered as an element of the world, God has the same degree and kind of objective reality as do other products of mind. [...] I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it possible to discover and propound good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God. [...] To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. [...] I am a rationalist—something of a period piece nowadays, I admit [...]" Peter Medawar, 'The Question of the Existence of God' in his book The Limits of Science (Harper and Row 1984).</ref>
Simon van der Meer (1925–2011): Dutch particle accelerator physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Carlo Rubbia for contributions to the CERN project which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles, two of the most fundamental constituents of matter.<ref>"The Dutch Nobel prize-winner, Simon van der Meer expressed this as follows: "As a physicist, you have to have a split personality to be still able to believe in a god."" Alfred Driessen, Antoine Suarez, Mathematical undecidability, quantum nonlocality, and the question of the existence of God (1997).</ref>
Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916): Russian biologist, zoologist and protozoologist. He is best known for his research into the immune system. Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, shared with Paul Ehrlich.<ref>"There is no clear record that he was professionally restricted in Russia because of his lineage, but he sympathized with the problem his Jewish colleagues suffered owing to Russian anti-Semitism; his personal religious commitment was to atheism, although he received strict Christian religious training at home." Alfred I. Tauber, Leon Chernyak, Metchnikoff and the origins of immunology: from metaphor to theory, page 5.</ref>
Marvin Minsky (1927–2016): American cognitive scientist and computer scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in MIT.<ref>Leon M. Lederman; Judith A. Scheppler (2001). "Marvin Minsky: Mind Maker". Portraits of Great American Scientists. Prometheus Books. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-57392-932-5. Another area where he "goes against the flow" is in his spiritual beliefs. As far as religion is concerned, he's a confirmed atheist. "I think it [religion] is a contagious mental disease. . . . The brain has a need to believe it knows a reason for things.</ref><ref>"When we reflect on anything for long enough, we're likely to end up with what we sometimes call "basic" questions – ones we can see no way at all to answer. For we have no perfect way to answer even this question: How can one tell when a question has been properly answered?

What caused the universe, and why? What is the purpose of life? How can you tell which beliefs are true? How can you tell what is good? These questions seem different on the surface, but all of them share one quality that makes them impossible to answer: all of them are circular! You can never find a final cause, since you must always ask one question more: "What caused that cause?" You can never find any ultimate goal, since you're always obliged to ask, "Then what purpose does that serve?" Whenever you find out why something is good-or is true-you still have to ask what makes that reason good and true. No matter what you discover, at every step, these kinds of questions will always remain, because you have to challenge every answer with, "Why should I accept that answer?" Such circularities can only waste our time by forcing us to repeat, over and over and over again, "What good is Good?" and, "What god made God?" " Marvin Minsky. The Society of Mind.</ref>

Peter D. Mitchell (1920–1992): 1978–Nobel-laureate British biochemist. His mother was an atheist and he himself became an atheist at the age of 15.<ref>Nobel Biography [5].</ref>
Jacob Moleschott (1822–1893): Dutch physiologist and writer on dietetics.<ref>Harmke Kamminga (1995). The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840–1940. Rodopi. p. 31. ISBN 978-90-5183-818-3. Moleschott's atheism is much more prominent, for example, and he declares absurd Liebig's opinion that insights into the laws of nature inevitably lead us to the notion of a Being knowable only through revelation.</ref>
Gaspard Monge (1746–1818): French mathematician. Monge is the inventor of descriptive geometry.<ref name="autogenerated274"/><ref>"Yet, sailing to Egypt, he had lain on deck, asking his scientists whether the planets were inhabited, how old the Earth was, and whether it would perish by fire or by flood. Many, like his friend Gaspard Monge, the first man to liquefy a gas, were atheists." Vincent Cronin,

The View from Planet Earth: Man looks at the Cosmos, page 164.</ref><ref>Laure Junot Abrantès (1881). Memoirs of Napoleon, His Court and Family, Volume 2. D. Appleton. p. 276.</ref>

Jacques Monod (1910–1976): French biologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis.<ref>"In his final chapter de Duve turns to the meaning of life, and considers the ideas of two contrasting Frenchmen: a priest, Teilhard de Chardin, and an existentialist and atheist, Jacques Monod." Peaks, Dust, & Dappled Spots, by Richard Lubbock, Books in Canada: The Canadian Review of Books. Retrieved July 2, 2007.</ref>
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012): Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF).<ref>Costantino Ceoldo (2012-12-31). "Homage to Rita Levi Montalcini". Retrieved 20 July 2013. Born and raised in a Sephardic Jewish family in which culture and love of learning were categorical imperatives, she abandoned religion and embraced atheism.</ref>
Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1740–1810): French chemist and paper-manufacturer. In 1783, he made the first ascent in a balloon (inflated with warm air).<ref>Joseph Mazzini Wheeler (1889). A biographical dictionary of freethinkers of all ages and nations. Progressive publishing company. p. 232. Retrieved 4 February 2017. Montgolfier (Michel Joseph), aeronaut. b. Aug. 1740. He was the first to ascend in an air balloon, 5 June 1783. A friend of Delambre and La Lalande, he was on the testimony of this last an atheist. Died 26 June 1810.</ref><ref>Warren Allen Smith (2000). Who's who in hell: a handbook and international directory for humanists, freethinkers, naturalists, rationalists, and non-theists. Barricade Books. p. 762. ISBN 978-1-56980-158-1. Also that year, a Montgolfier balloon sailed over Paris in the first manned free balloon flight. Montgolfier served the Revolution with zeal and was much honored. Lalande, who knew him well, wrote that Montgolfier was an atheist.</ref>
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945): American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and embryologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries relating the role the chromosome plays in heredity.<ref>George Pendle (2006). Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-15-603179-0. Retrieved 4 February 2017. The Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and stringent atheist Thomas Hunt Morgan was developing the chromosome theory of heredity by examining his swarm of mutated Drosophila (fruit flies) through a jeweler's loupe.</ref><ref>"Morgan's passion for experimentation was symptomatic of his general scepticism and his distaste for speculation. He believed only what could be proven. He was said to be an atheist, and I have always believed that he was. Everything I knew about him—his scepticism, his honesty—was consistent with disbelief in the supernatural." Norman H. Horowitz, T. H. Morgan at Caltech: A Reminiscence, Genetics, Vol. 149, 1629–1632, August 1998, Copyright © 1998.</ref><ref>http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3677/1/Goodstein.pdf^{[bare URL PDF]}</ref><ref>Horowitz, Norman H. (1998-08-01). "T. H. Morgan at Caltech: A Reminiscence". Genetics. 149 (4): 1629–1632. doi:10.1093/genetics/149.4.1629. PMC 1460264. PMID 9691024. Retrieved 2018-07-30.</ref>
Desmond Morris (1928–): English zoologist and ethologist, famous for describing human behaviour from a zoological perspective in his books The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo.<ref>"[Religion] is not an easy subject to deal with, but as zoologists we must do our best to observe what actually happens rather than listen to what is supposed to be happening. If we do this, we are forced to the conclusion that, in a behavioural sense, religious activities consist of the coming together of large groups of people to perform repeated and prolonged submissive displays to appease a dominant individual. The dominant individual takes many forms in different cultures, but always has the common factor of immense power. [...] If these submissive actions are successful, the dominant individual is appeased. [...] The dominant individual is usually, but not always, referred to as a god. Since none of these gods exist in a tangible form, why have they been invented? To find the answer to this we have to go right back to our ancestral origins." Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape, pp. 178–179, Jonathan Cape, 1967.</ref><ref>"Man's evolution as a neotenous ape has put him in a similar position to the dog's. He becomes sexually mature and yet he still needs a parent — a super-parent, one as impressive to him as a man must be to a dog. The answer was to invent a god — either a female super-parent in the shape of a Mother Goddess, or a male god in the shape of God the Father, or perhaps even a whole family of gods. Like real parents they would both protect, punish and be obeyed. [...] These — the houses of the gods — the temples, the churches and the cathedrals — are buildings apparently made for giants, and a space visitor would be surprised to find on closer examination that these giants are never at home. Their followers repeatedly visit them and bow down before them, but they themselves are invisible. Only their bell-like cries can be heard across the land. Man is indeed an imaginative species." Desmond Morris, The Pocket Guide to Manwatching, p.234-236 Triad Paperbacks, 1982.</ref>
David Morrison (1940–): American astronomer and senior scientist at the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, at NASA Ames Research Center, whose research interests include planetary science, astrobiology, and near earth objects.<ref>"Astrobiologist & Simpsons Director to Speak at National Atheist Convention". 19 February 2014.</ref>
Luboš Motl (1973–): Theoretical physicist and string theorist. He said he is a Christian atheist.<ref>Lubos Motl, http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/oriana-fallaci-force-of-reason.html</ref>
Hermann Joseph Muller (1890–1967): American geneticist and educator, best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (X-ray mutagenesis). He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946.<ref>"Muller, who through Unitarianism had become an enthusiastic pantheist, was converted both to atheism and to socialism." Hermann Joseph Muller. 1890–1967, G. Pontecorvo, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 14, Nov., 1968 (Nov., 1968), pp. 348–389 (Quote from p. 353) Retrieved July 14, 2007.</ref>
PZ Myers (1957–): American evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Minnesota and a blogger via his blog, Pharyngula.<ref>"I was brought up a Lutheran, but I became an atheist"—PZ Myers (February 14, 2007), It's the arrogance, stupid Archived 2008-06-04 at the Wayback Machine, Pharyngula. Retrieved February 22, 2007.</ref>

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John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928–2015): American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. He shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.<ref>Sylvia Nasar (2011). "Chapter 17: Bad Boys". A Beautiful Mind. Simon and Schuster. p. 143. ISBN 978-1-4391-2649-3. In this circle, Nash learned to make a virtue of necessity, styling himself self-consciously as a "free thinker." He announced that he was an atheist.</ref><ref>Sylvia Nasar (1999). A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-85370-3. Nash, by then an atheist, balked at a Catholic ceremony. He would have been happy to get married in city hall.</ref>
Yuval Ne'eman (1925–2006): Israeli theoretical physicist, military scientist, and politician. One of his greatest achievements in physics was his 1961 discovery of the classification of hadrons through the SU(3)flavour symmetry, now named the Eightfold Way, which was also proposed independently by Murray Gell-Mann.<ref>Yuval Ne'eman (2003). Studies in memory of Issai Schur. Springer. p. xxi. ISBN 978-0-8176-4208-2. Unfortunately I am a 100% skeptic (an "Epicurus" in Yiddish), an atheist although not in an aggressive connotation.</ref><ref>Michael P. Prior (1997). The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 164. ISBN 978-1-85075-815-0. Although an atheist, Neeman believes that traditions are important for a revolutionary movement, and he strongly defends the spiritual heritage of the Jewish people, preaches a retum to biblical sources, and is in constant dialogue with the ultra-nationalist-religious groupings.</ref>
Ted Nelson: (1937–): American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist who coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and published them in 1965.<ref>"Nelson's hatred of conventional structure made him difficult to educate. Bored and disgusted by school, he once plotted to stab his seventh-grade teacher with a sharpened screwdriver, but lost his nerve at the last minute and walked out of the classroom, never to return. On his long walk home, he came up with the four maxims that have guided his life: most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong." Warren Allen Smith, Celebrities in Hell, pages 88–89.</ref>
Alfred Nobel (1833–1896): Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist who is known for inventing dynamite and holding 355 patents. He was a benefactor of the Nobel Prize.<ref>"Alfred Nobel – St. Petersburg, 1842–1863". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2018-07-30.</ref><ref>Michael Evlanoff; Marjorie Fluor (1969). Alfred Nobel, the loneliest millionaire. W. Ritchie Press. p. 88. "He declared himself an agnostic in his youth, an atheist later, but at the same time, bestowed generous sums to the church..."</ref><ref>Cobb, Cathy, and Harold Goldwhite. Creations of Fire: Chemistry's Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age. New York: Plenum, 1995. Print. "But Nobel, both atheist and a socialist..."</ref>
Paul Nurse (1949–): English geneticist, President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division (duplication) of cells in the cell cycle.<ref>"I gradually slipped away from religion over several years and became an atheist or to be more philosophically correct, a sceptical agnostic." Nurse's autobiography at Nobelprize.org</ref>

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Mark Oliphant (1901–2000): Australian physicist and humanitarian. He played a fundamental role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and also the development of the atomic bomb.<ref>"It was nice to be honoured but I like 'Mark' not 'Sir Mark'. When one's young, one's brash and all-knowing; when one's old, one realises how little one knows. You asked me earlier if I believed in God and the hereafter. I would tend to say no but when one dies one could well be surprised." Mark Oliphant from an interview in 1996., Sir Mark Oliphant – Reluctant Builder of the Atom Bomb.</ref>
Alexander Oparin (1894–1980): Soviet biochemist.<ref>Neil Schlager; Josh Lauer (2000). Science and its times: understanding the social significance of scientific discovery (illustrated ed.). Gale Group. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-7876-3939-6. Alexander Oparin (1894–1980), an atheist, suggested that natural chemical reactions produced biological molecules that came together to form the first living thing.</ref>
Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985): American particle physicist, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, and the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. A younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer conducted research on aspects of nuclear physics during the time of the Manhattan Project, and made contributions to uranium enrichment.<ref>K. C. Cole (2012). Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and His Astonishing Exploratorium. University of Chicago Press. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-0-226-11347-0. For the locals, it was as if aliens had landed. "The normal folks were wearing tight jeans and cowboy hats, and here was a rancher who didn't wear a hat," said Pete Richards, who lived on one of the neighboring ranches at the time. "He was skinnier than a rail, he was really hyper. Both he and Jackie swore like sailors. And they were atheists!".</ref>
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967): American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley; along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer's achievements in physics include the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. With his students he made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays.<ref>Dronamraju, Krishna (2008). Emerging Consequences of Biotechnology: Biodiversity Loss and IPR Issues. World Scientific. p. 413. ISBN 978-981-277-500-9. Most of them are either atheists like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, or agnostics like JBS Haldane.</ref><ref>Axelrod, Alan (2009). Risk: Adversaries and Allies: Mastering Strategic Relationships. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-4027-5411-1. He was a Jew and Groves was at least conventionally anti-Semitic; but perhaps worse, Oppenheimer practiced no religion at all and thus was almost certainly an atheist or agnostic, whereas Groves was the sincerely believing son of an army chaplain.</ref>
Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932): Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities. He, along with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff and Svante Arrhenius, are usually credited with being the modern founders of the field of physical chemistry.<ref>Jürgen Kocka (2010). Jürgen Kocka (ed.). Work in a Modern Society: The German Historical Experience in Comparative Perspective. Berghahn Books. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-84545-575-0. Even Wilhelm Ostwald, who was the most radical atheist among these scholars, uses the instrument of the 'Monistic Sunday Sermons' to spread his ideas on rationality.</ref>

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Linus Pauling (1901–1994): American chemist, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962)<ref name="Pauling"/><ref>Originally a Lutheran, Pauling declared his atheism in 1992, two years before his death.</ref>
John Allen Paulos (1945–): Professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia and writer, author of Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (2007)<ref>Amazon listing of Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up.</ref>
Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936): Nobel Prize–winning Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician, widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning.<ref>Pavlov's follower E.M. Kreps asked him whether he was religious. Kreps writes that Pavlov smiled and replied: "Listen, good fellow, in regard to [claims of] my religiosity, my belief in God, my church attendance, there is no truth in it; it is sheer fantasy. I was a seminarian, and like the majority of seminarians, I became an unbeliever, an atheist in my school years." Quoted in George Windholz, "Pavlov's Religious Orientation", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 25, no. 3 (Sept. 1986), pp. 320–27.</ref>
Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–1981): Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and the first female radio astronomer.<ref>W. M. Goss; W. William Miller Goss; Richard X. McGee (2009). "Last Years". Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy: Ruby Payne-Scott. Springer. p. 253. ISBN 978-3-642-03141-0.</ref>
Judea Pearl (1936–): Israeli American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks. He won the Turing Award in 2011.<ref>Mathew Philips. "Tragedy and Opportunity: The parents of slain journalist Danny Pearl have devoted their lives to improving Muslim-Jewish relations". Retrieved 12 July 2013. I turned secular at the age of 11, by divine revelation. [Laughs.] I was standing on the roof of the house my father built, looking down on the street and suddenly it became very clear to me that there is no God.</ref>
Karl Pearson FRS (1857–1936): Influential English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics, meteorology, theories of social Darwinism and eugenics.<ref>McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy: Yale UP, 2011. Print. "Karl Pearson...was a zealous atheist..."</ref><ref>Porter, Theodore M. Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.</ref>
Sir Roger Penrose (1931–): English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He is renowned for his work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher.<ref>Steve Paulson (May 4, 2017). "Roger Penrose On Why Consciousness Does Not Compute". Nautilus. NautilusThink Inc. Retrieved 24 August 2018. In some ways, Penrose and Hameroff are the odd couple of science. Hameroff is upfront about his spiritual views, talking openly about the possibility of the soul existing after death. Penrose is an atheist who calls himself "a very materialistic and physicalist kind of person," and he's bothered by New Agers who've latched onto quantum theories about non-locality and entanglement to prop up their paranormal beliefs.</ref>
Francis Perrin (1901–1992): French physicist, co-establisher of the possibility of nuclear chain reactions and nuclear energy production.<ref>"After retirement, he remained politically active, defending Andrei Sakharov, and was President of the French Atheists' Union." D S Bell, 'Obituary: Francis Perrin', The Independent (London), July 18, 1992, Pg. 44.</ref>
Jean Baptiste Perrin (1870–1942): Nobel Prize–winning French physicist.<ref>Bernard Valeur; Jean-Claude Brochon (2001). New Trends in Fluorescence Spectroscopy: Applications to Chemical and Life Sciences. Springer. p. 17. ISBN 978-3-540-67779-6. Jean and Francis Perrin held similar political and philosophical ideas. Both were socialists and atheists.</ref>
Max Perutz (1914–2002): Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins.<ref>"Dr Perutz, said: "It is one thing for scientists to oppose creationism which is demonstrably false but quite another to make pronouncements which offend people's religious faith – that is a form of tactlessness which merely brings science into disrepute. My view of religion and ethics is simple: even if we do not believe in God, we should try to live as though we did."" Kam Patel, Perutz rubbishes Popper and Kuhn, 25 November 1994.</ref>
Robert Phelps (1926–2013): American mathematician who was known for his contributions to analysis, particularly to functional analysis and measure theory. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of Washington from 1962 until his death.<ref>"In Memoriam: Robert R. Phelps (1926-2013) « Math Drudge". experimentalmath.info.</ref>
Steven Pinker (1954–): Canadian-American psychologist, psycholinguist, and popular science author.<ref>"I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew." The Guardian Profile (November 6, 1999). "Steven Pinker: the mind reader". London: Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 2006-12-10.</ref>
Norman Pirie FRS (1907–1997): British biochemist and virologist co-discoverer in 1936 of viral crystallization, an important milestone in understanding DNA and RNA.<ref>"During sixty years from 1937 he also wrote over forty articles on the origins, distribution, and nature of life, taking the stance of a 'dogmatic atheist'." David F. Smith, 'Pirie, Norman Wingate [Bill] (1907–1997)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edition, October 2005 (accessed May 2, 2008).</ref>
Henri Poincaré (1854–1912): French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.<ref>Joseph McCabe (1945). A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Freethinkers. Haldeman-Julius Publications. Retrieved 10 April 2012. "In his last words (published as Last Thoughts, 1913) he entirely rejects Christianity and believes in God only in the sense that he is the moral ideal. In effect he was an atheist."</ref><ref>Poincaré, Henri (January 1, 1913). Dernières Pensées. p. 138. Retrieved 10 April 2012. "Les dogmes des religions révélées ne sont pas les seuls à craindre. L'empreinte que le catholicisme a imprimée sur l'âme occidentale a été si profonde que bien des esprits à peine affranchis ont eu la nostalgie de la servitude et se sont efforcés de reconstituer des Eglises; c'est ainsi que certaines écoles positivistes ne sont qu'un catholicisme sans Dieu. Auguste Comte lui- même rêvait de discipliner les âmes et certains de ses disciples, exagérant la pensée du maître, deviendraient bien vite des ennemis de la science s'ils étaient les plus forts."</ref><ref>Weinstein, Galina (July 3, 2012). "A Biography of Henri Poincaré - 2012 Centenary of the Death of Poincaré". arXiv:1207.0759 [physics.hist-ph].</ref>
Carolyn Porco (1953–): American planetary scientist, known for her work in the exploration of the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission to Saturn.<ref>Somma, Ryan. Enlightenment Living, Essays on Living a Virtuous Scientific Life. : ideonexus, 2012. Print.</ref>
Donald Prothero (1954–): American geologist, paleontologist, and author who specializes in mammalian paleontology and magnetostratigraphy. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books and over 250 scientific papers, including five geology textbooks.<ref>"What the Fossils Say (with Dr. Donald Prothero)". 3 June 2014.</ref>

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Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988): American physicist and Nobel Prize–winning scientist who discovered nuclear magnetic resonance in 1944 and was also one of the first scientists in the US to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.<ref>Rigden, John S. (1987). Rabi, Scientist and Citizen. Sloan Foundation Series. New York: Basic Books. p. 23. ISBN 0-465-06792-1. OCLC 14931559.</ref>
Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930): British mathematician who also made significant contributions in philosophy and economics.<ref>"His tolerance and good humour enabled him to disagree strongly without giving or taking offence, for example with his brother Michael Ramsey whose ordination (he went on to become archbishop of Canterbury) Ramsey, as a militant atheist, naturally regretted." D. H. Mellor, 'Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–1930)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2005 (accessed May 2, 2008).</ref>
Lisa Randall (1962–): American theoretical physicist working in particle physics and cosmology, and the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University.<ref>Powell, Corey S. "The Discovery Interview: Lisa Randall". Discover Magazine, 29 July 2006. Retrieved 1 July 2017.</ref>
Marcus J. Ranum (1962–): American computer and network security researcher and industry leader. He is credited with a number of innovations in firewalls.<ref>Ranum, Marcus. "Ranum's supports Dawkins's "out campaign" for atheists". Retrieved 12 April 2012. Generally, I do not get a lot of satisfaction out of being identified with causes or logos. But – a couple of years ago, when Richard Dawkins started his "out campaign" for atheists, I thought that showing my support was not a bad idea.</ref>
Grote Reber (1911–2002): American astronomer. A pioneer of radio astronomy.<ref>Nicholas Shakespeare (21 Oct 2008). "Tasmania: Alarmed by bumps in the starlit night". The Telegraph. Reber was a diehard atheist, and whatever he understood of those bumps in the night is not certain.</ref>
Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow (1942–): British cosmologist and astrophysicist.<ref>Rod Dreher (April 20, 2011). "Martin J. Rees Wins 2011 Templeton Prize". Templeton Report. Archived from the original on 8 August 2013. Retrieved 4 August 2013. As it turns out, Lord Rees is an atheist, though one who said in a recent interview that he is "not allergic to religion," and that he enjoys participating in aesthetic and cultural activities of the Anglican church, in which he was raised.</ref>
Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957): Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.<ref>Donald De Marco; Donald DeMarco; Benjamin Wiker (2004). Architects of the Culture of Death. Ignatius Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-1-58617-016-5. Wilhelm declared himself a "confirmed atheist" at the age of eight.</ref>
Charles Francis Richter (1900–1985): American seismologist and physicist who is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, quantified the size of earthquakes.<ref>Hough, Susan Elizabeth. Richter's Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man. N.p.: Princeton U Press, 2007. Print. "The fact that Richter was devout only about his atheism..." pg. 152</ref>
Alice Roberts (1973–): English evolutionary biologist, biological anthropologist, and science communicator at the University of Birmingham.<ref>"Q&A: Alice Roberts". 22 October 2012.</ref>
Mark Roberts (1961–): English archaeologist specializing in the study of the Palaeolithic, and is best known for his discovery and subsequent excavations at the Lower Palaeolithic site of Boxgrove Quarry in southern England.<ref name="ReferenceA">Pitts and Roberts 1998. p. 72.</ref>
Richard J. Roberts (1943–): British biochemist and molecular biologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.<ref>"The Nobel Laureate Dr Richard Roberts will give a public lecture entitled A Bright Journey from Science to Atheism..." A bright journey to atheism, or a road that ignores all the signs? Archived 2012-10-12 at the Wayback Machine, The Irish Times, April 20, 2006. Retrieved July 24, 2007.</ref><ref>"...Rich Roberts... delivered a public lecture on his Bright journey from Science to Atheism in April 2006." Events listing Archived 2008-05-14 at the Wayback Machine on the website of Humani, The Humanist Association of Northern Ireland, Retrieved July 24, 2007.</ref><ref>Roberts versus God: No Contest Archived 2011-07-23 at the Wayback Machine, review of Roberts' talk A Bright Journey from Science to Atheism, written by Les Reid, and published on the Belfast Humanist Group Archived 2009-08-25 at the Wayback Machine website. Retrieved July 24, 2007.</ref>
Carl Rogers (1902–1987): American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1956.<ref>Michael Martin (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-0-521-84270-9. Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including G. Stanley Hall, John B. Watson, Carl R. Rogers...</ref>
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic and political activist. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.<ref>Russell, Bertrand (1947). "Am I An Atheist or an Agnostic?". Encyclopedia of Things. Archived from the original on 22 June 2005. Retrieved 6 July 2005.: "I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist"... As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove (sic) that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist..."</ref>
Adam Rutherford (1975–): British geneticist, author, and broadcaster. He was an audio-visual content editor for the journal Nature for a decade, is a frequent contributor to the newspaper The Guardian, hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Science, has produced several science documentaries and has published books related to genetics and the origin of life.<ref>"Science, atheism and ironed trousers | Adam Rutherford". The Guardian. December 3, 2009 – via www.theguardian.com.</ref>

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Oliver Sacks (1933–2015): United States-based British neurologist, who has written popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings.<ref>Charlie Rose, interviewing Oliver Sacks, asked him whether he believed in God. Sacks replied, "I can't imagine what it meant.... No, I guess not." Originally aired on Charlie Rose, 23 Feb. 1995; re-aired, in commemoration of Sacks' death, on 11 Sept. 2015.</ref><ref>"All of which makes the Wingate Prize a matter of bemusement. "Yes, tell me," he says, frowning. "What is it, and why are they giving it to an old Jewish atheist who has unkind things to say about Zionism?" "Oliver Burkeman interviewing Sacks, 'Inside Story: Sacks appeal', The Guardian, May 10, 2002, Features Pages, Pg. 4.</ref>
Carl Sagan (1934–1996): American astronomer and astrochemist, a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences, and pioneer of exobiology and promoter of the SETI. Although Sagan has been identified as an atheist according to some definitions,<ref name="achenbach">Achenbach, Joel (2006-04-23). "Worlds Away". Washington Post. p. W15. By most definitions he would be called an atheist, but he hated the term. 'An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.'

</ref><ref>"...he was a confirmed atheist. 'I would lose my integrity if I accepted a belief system that did not stand up to sceptical scrutiny,' he said recently." Ian Katz, 'Sagan, Man Who Brought Cosmos to Earth, Dies', The Guardian, December 21, 1996, Pg. 3.</ref><ref>"In the end, Sagan... died an uncompromising atheist." Robin Mckie, 'Beauty is... in the measurements', The Observer, August 24, 1997, Review Pages, Pg. 14.</ref> he rejected the label, stating "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know."<ref name="achenbach"/> He was an agnostic who,<ref>Head, Tom. "Conversations with Carl". Skeptic. 13 (1): 32–38. Excerpted in Head, Tom, ed. (2006). Conversations with Carl Sagan. University of Mississippi Press. ISBN 1-57806-736-7.</ref> while maintaining that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to disprove,<ref>Sagan, Carl (1996). The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 278. ISBN 0-345-40946-9.</ref> nevertheless disbelieved in God's existence, pending sufficient evidence.<ref>"They rose (if prayers do rise) to the heaven Sagan had never seen in all his years of searching the sky, and were heard (if prayers are heard) by the God Sagan never called on... But he died in what amounted, for him, to a state of grace: resisting the one temptation to which almost everyone submits in the end, the temptation to believe... For most of the last decade of his life he engaged in a wide-ranging dialogue with religious leaders on the question...: does God exist? He argued the negative, although his formal position was agnostic, awaiting proof... 'You're so smart, why do you believe in God?' [Sagan] once exclaimed to [Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches]... 'You're so smart, why don't you believe in God?' she answered... His friends prayed harder, but Sagan never wavered in his agnosticism. ¶ 'There was no deathbed conversion,' Druyan says. 'No appeals to God, no hope for an afterlife, no pretending that he and I, who had been inseparable for 20 years, were not saying goodbye forever.' ¶ Didn't he want to believe? she was asked. ¶ 'Carl never wanted to believe,' she replies fiercely. 'He wanted to know.'" "Unbeliever's Quest", by Jerry Adler, Newsweek (United States Edition), March 31, 1997, Pg. 64</ref>

Meghnad Saha (1893–1956): Indian astrophysicist noted for his development in 1920 of the thermal ionization equation, which has remained fundamental in all work on stellar atmospheres. This equation has been widely applied to the interpretation of stellar spectra, which are characteristic of the chemical composition of the light source. The Saha equation links the composition and appearance of the spectrum with the temperature of the light source and can thus be used to determine either the temperature of the star or the relative abundance of the chemical elements investigated.<ref>Santimay Chatterjee; Enakshi Chatterjee (1984). Meghnad Saha, scientist with a vision. National Book Trust, India. p. 5. Retrieved 4 February 2017. Even though he later came to be known as an atheist, Saha was well-versed in all religious texts— though his interest in them was purely academic.</ref><ref>Robert S. Anderson (2010). Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India. University of Chicago Press. p. 602. ISBN 978-0-226-01975-8. a self-described atheist, saha loved swimming in the river and his devout wife loved the sanctity of the spot. swimming and walking were among the few things they could do together.</ref>
Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989): Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He gained renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a code name for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Sakharov Prize, which is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms, is named in his honor.<ref>Gennady Gorelik; Antonina W. Bouis (2005). The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist's Path to Freedom. Oxford University Press. p. 356. ISBN 978-0-19-515620-1. Apparently Sakharov did not need to delve any deeper into it for a long time, remaining a totally nonmilitant atheist with an open heart.</ref><ref>Gennadiĭ Efimovich Gorelik; Antonina W. Bouis (2005). The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist's Path to Freedom. Oxford University Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-19-515620-1. Sakharov was not invited to this seminar. Like most of the physicists of his generation, he was an atheist.</ref><ref>Todd K. Shackelford; Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford, eds. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War. Oxford University Press. p. 465. ISBN 978-0-19-973840-3. The Soviet dissident most responsible for defeating communism, Andrei Sakharov, was an atheist.</ref>
Robert Sapolsky (1957–): American neuroendocrinologist and professor of biology, neurology, and neurobiology at Stanford University.<ref>Dan Barker: "When we invited Robert Sapolsky to speak at one of out national conventions to receive our 'Emperor Has No Clothes Award', Robert wrote to me, 'Sure! Get the local Holiday Inn to put up a sign that says Welcome, Hell-bound Atheists!' [...] So, welcome you hell-bound atheist to Freethought Radio, Robert." Sapolsky: "Well, delighted to be among my kindred souls." [...] Annie Laurie Gaylor: So how long have you been a kindred non-soul, what made you an atheist Robert?" Sapolsky: "Oh, I was about fourteen or so... I was brought up very very religiously, orthodox Jewish background and major-league rituals and that sort of thing [...] and something happened when I was fourteen, and no doubt what it was really about was my gonads or who knows what, but over the course of a couple of weeks there was some sort of introspective whatever, where I suddenly decided this was all gibberish. And, among other things, also deciding there's no free will, but not in a remotely religious context, and deciding all of this was nonsense, and within a two-week period all of that belief stuff simply evaporated." Freethought Radio podcast (mp3), February 3, 2007 (accessed April 22, 2008).</ref>
Mahendralal Sarkar (1833–1904): Indian physician and academic.<ref>Manabendra Nath Roy, ed. (1973). The Radical humanist, Volume 37. Radical Humanist. p. 18. It cannot be said that Dr. Sarkar was a confirmed atheist.</ref>
Marcus du Sautoy (1965–): mathematician and holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science.<ref>

 du Sautoy, Marcus (2008-10-28). "Science Extra: Marcus du Sautoy steps into Dawkins' boots". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2008-10-29.

</ref>

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (1950–): German atmospheric physicist, climatologist and founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and ex-chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU).<ref>"Vatican's Climate Expert, an Atheist, Speaks on Impact of Leader of World's 1.2B Catholics Tackling Environment Issue". 2015-06-19.</ref>
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961): Austrian-Irish physicist and theoretical biologist. A pioneer of quantum mechanics and winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics.<ref>Walter J. Moore (1994). A Life of Erwin Schrödinger. Cambridge University Press. pp. 289–290. Bibcode:1994les..book.....M. ISBN 978-0-521-46934-0. In one respect, however, he is not a romantic: he does not idealize the person of the beloved, his highest praise is to consider her his equal. "When you feel your own equal in the body of a beautiful woman, just as ready to forget the world for you as you for her – oh my good Lord – who can describe what happiness then. You can live it, now and again – you cannot speak of it." Of course, he does speak of it, and almost always with religious imagery. Yet at this time he also wrote, "By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were." And in another place at about this same time: "Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't." Whatever problems they may have had in their love affair, the pangs of conscience were not among them. Sheila was as much an unbeliever as Erwin, but in a less complex, more realistic way. She was never entirely convinced by his vedantic theology.</ref><ref>Andrea Diem-Lane. Spooky Physics. MSAC Philosophy Group. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-56543-080-8. In terms of religion, Schrodinger fits in the atheist camp. He even lost a marriage proposal to his love, Felicie Krauss, not only due to his social status but his lack of religious affiliation. He was known as a freethinker who did not believe in god. But interestingly Schrodinger had a deep connection to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Eastern philosophy in general. Erwin studied numerous books on Eastern thought as well as the Hindu scriptures. He was enthralled with Vedanta thought and connected ideas of oneness and unity of mind with his research on quantum physics, specifically wave mechanics.</ref><ref>Moore, Walter (1994). A Life of Erwin Schrödinger. Cambridge University Press. Bibcode:1994les..book.....M. ISBN 978-0-521-46934-0. Schopenhauer often called himself an atheist, as did Schrodinger, and if Buddhism and Vedanta can be truly described as atheistic religions, both the philosopher and his scientific disciple were indeed atheists. They both rejected the idea of a "personal God," and Schopenhauer thought that "pantheism is only a euphemism for atheism."</ref><ref>Moore, Walter (1989). Schrödinger: Life and Thought. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43767-9. He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but simply by saying that they are naive.</ref><ref>Walter J. Moore (1992). Schrödinger: Life and Thought. Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-521-43767-7. He claimed to be an atheist, but he always used religious symbolism and believed his scientific work was an approach to the godhead.</ref><ref>"Erwin Schrodinger" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 May 2014. Retrieved 22 June 2012. He claimed to be an atheist, but he used religious symbolism and believed that his scientific work was 'an approach to God'.</ref>
Laurent Schwartz (1915–2002): French mathematician, awarded the Fields medal for his work on distributions.<ref>Laurent Schwartz (2001). A Mathematician Grappling With His Century. Springer. p. 193. ISBN 978-3-7643-6052-8. My parents were atheists, I was an atheist, I never really felt Jewish.</ref>
Dennis W. Sciama (1926–1999): British physicist who played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War. His most significant work was in general relativity, with and without quantum theory, and black holes. He helped revitalize the classical relativistic alternative to general relativity known as Einstein-Cartan gravity. He is considered one of the fathers of modern cosmology.<ref>George F. R. Ellis and Sir Roger Penrose (May 26, 2010). "Dennis William Sciama" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. The Royal Society. 56: 401–422. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2009.0023. S2CID 73035217. Retrieved 8 October 2018. Although having a distinct loyalty to his Jewish origins and friends, Dennis himself was an avowed atheist, as was his father, and neither generally followed Jewish religious practice.</ref>
Nadrian Seeman (1945–2021): American nanotechnologist and crystallographer known for inventing the field of DNA nanotechnology.<ref>http://www.kavliprize.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2016. "At about the time I got to high school, I lost whatever faith I might have had, and I've been an atheist ever since."</ref>
Celâl Şengör (1955–): Turkish geologist, and currently on the faculty at Istanbul Technical University.<ref>"Creation vs. Darwin takes Muslim twist in Turkey". Reuters. 2006-11-22.</ref>
Claude Shannon (1916–2001): American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called "the father of information theory", and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory.<ref>"Shannon described himself as an atheist and was outwardly apolitical." William Poundstone, Fortune's Formula, Hill and Wang: New York (2005), page 18.</ref><ref>Secret History: The Story of Cryptology – Craig P. Bauer. CRC Press. 2016. p. 329. ISBN 978-1-4665-6187-8.</ref>
William Shockley (1910–1989): American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.<ref>Joel N. Shurkin (2008). Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 133. ISBN 978-0-230-55192-3. He considered himself an atheist and never went to church.</ref>
William James Sidis (1898–1944): American mathematician, cosmologist, inventor, linguist, historian and child prodigy.<ref name="Doug Renselle">Doug Renselle. "A Review of Amy Wallace's The Prodigy". Quantonics, Inc. Retrieved 20 June 2012. Rabid atheist by age six. (His father, Boris, was too, but intensely studied great religious works.)</ref>
Boris Sidis (1867–1923): Russian American psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education. Sidis founded the New York State Psychopathic Institute and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was the father of child prodigy William James Sidis.<ref name="Doug Renselle"/>
Ethan Siegel (1978–): American theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, whose area of research focuses on quantum mechanics and the Big Bang theory.<ref>Siegel, Ethan (August 7, 2011). "Weekend Diversion: Opening up about religion and beliefs". Starts With a Bang. Retrieved January 4, 2017.</ref>
Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001): American Nobel laureate, was a political scientist, economist, sociologist, psychologist, computer scientist, and Richard King Mellon Professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics, management, philosophy of science, sociology, and political science, unified by studies of decision-making.<ref>Hunter Crowther-Heyck (2005). Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America. JHU Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-8018-8025-4. His secular, scientific values came well before he was old enough to make such calculating career decisions. For example, while still in middle school, Simon wrote a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal defending the civil liberties of atheists, and by high school he was "certain" that he was "religiously an atheist," a conviction that never wavered.</ref>
Michael Smith (1932–2000): British-born Canadian biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1993.<ref>Smith, Michael. Michael Smith: Autobiography. Nobel Prize.org. Retrieved February 3, 2007.</ref>
John Maynard Smith (1920–2004): British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory.<ref>British Humanist Society, "John Maynard Smith talking to Humanist News in Autumn 2001," from the obituary "John Maynard Smith (1920–2004)," Humanism.org.uk (2004). Retrieved July 31, 2011.</ref>
Oliver Smithies (1925–2017): British-born American Nobel Prize–winning geneticist and physical biochemist. He is known for introducing starch as a medium for gel electrophoresis in 1955 and for the discovery, simultaneously with Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans, of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA, a much more reliable method of altering animal genomes than previously used, and the technique behind gene targeting and knockout mice.<ref name=UCLA_oral_history>"Oliver Smithies Interview: Session 1" (PDF). UCLA Oral History of Human Genetics. October 27, 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 13, 2017. Retrieved January 14, 2017. But that tells you about my religious affiliation, which is not very strong, and I must say I'm not even an agnostic. I'm just an atheist in real life.</ref>
George Smoot (1945–): American astrophysicist and cosmologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the measurement "of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.<ref>Lutzer, Erwin W. 7 reasons why you can trust the Bible. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015. Print. "George Smoot, a committed atheist.."</ref>
Alan Sokal (1955–): American professor of physics at New York University and professor of mathematics at University College London. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996.<ref>"Biblical scholar Jacques Berlinerblau points out, in an interesting recent book, The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (2005), that most contemporary atheists and agnostics — myself included, I must confess — are astoundingly ignorant of the details of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur'an (not to mention the Bhagavad Gita and the Tripitaka, one could add). ... When all is said and done, I see no reason to amend my judgment that the existence of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic or Hindu gods is about as plausible, given the currently available evidence, as the existence of Zeus or Thor." — Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture (2008).</ref>
Dan Sperber (1942–): French social and cognitive scientist, whose most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology and linguistic pragmatics.<ref name="GE interview">Khan, Razib (17 December 2005). "10 questions for Dan Sperber". Gene Expression. Retrieved 3 March 2011.</ref>
Robert Spitzer (1932–2015): American psychiatrist, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, a major architect of the modern classification of mental disorders.<ref>"Dr Spitzer has said repeatedly that as an "atheist Jew" his only interest in the issue is scientific truth, adding that an orthodoxy which forbids acknowledgement of the possibility of change is as flawed as that which labels homosexuality an act of will and morally wrong." Charles Laurence, 'Going straight', Sunday Telegraph, October 12, 2003, Pg. 19.</ref>
Jack Steinberger (1921–2020): German-American-Swiss physicist and Nobel Laureate in 1988, co-discoverer of the muon neutrino.<ref>Istva ́n Hargittai, Magdolna Hargittai (2006). Candid Science VI: More Conversations with Famous Scientists. Imperial College Press. p. 749. ISBN 978-1-86094-885-5. Jack Steinberger: "I'm now a bit anti-Jewish since my last visit to the synagogue, but my atheism does not necessarily reject religion."</ref>
Hugo Steinhaus (1887–1972): Polish mathematician and educator.<ref>Steven G. Krantz (2002). Mathematical Apocrypha: Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical. Mathematical Association of America. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-88385-539-3. Steinhaus was an outspoken atheist.</ref>
Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014): American physicist, emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii and adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. Author of the book God: The Failed Hypothesis.<ref>Stenger, Victor J. (January 2007). God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (9781591024811): Victor J. Stenger: Books. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-59102-481-1.</ref><ref>"The Scientific Case Against God". www.colorado.edu. Archived from the original on April 24, 2008.</ref>
Eleazar Sukenik (1889–1953): Israeli archaeologist and professor of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, undertaking excavations in Jerusalem, and recognising the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel.<ref>"I read a few sentences. It was written in beautiful Biblical Hebrew. The language was like that of the Psalms.' One of these was the Isaiah scroll, which I saw recently in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem: sections of goat-skin parchment, sewn together, 27 feet long. I felt in the presence of something numinous, although I have been a convinced atheist since boyhood. But this document is a testament to the inexplicable persistence of the human mind, in the face of all the evidence, in believing that we are on earth for a divine purpose." Eleazar Sukenik, quoted in Justin Cartwright, 'The indestructible power of belief', The Guardian, May 27, 2000, Saturday Pages, Pg. 3.</ref>
John Sulston (1942–2018): British biologist. He is a joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.<ref>Sulston, John. "Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God". YouTube. Retrieved 8 April 2012. I believe atheism makes coherent sense.</ref>
Leonard Susskind (1940–): American theoretical physicist; a founding father of superstring theory and professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University.<ref>In a review of Susskind's book The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, Michael Duff writes that Susskind is "a card-carrying atheist." Life in a landscape of possibilities, December 2005. Retrieved May 30, 2007.</ref>

Dick Swaab (1944): Dutch physician and neurobiologist (brain researcher). He is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam and was until 2005 Director of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research (Nederlands Instituut voor Hersenonderzoek) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen). He is known for his book We Are Our Brains (2010).

T

Igor Tamm (1895–1971): Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, for their 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation.<ref>Vitaliĭ Lazarevich Ginzburg (2005). About Science, Myself and Others. CRC Press. p. 253. ISBN 978-0-7503-0992-9. Nowadays, when we are facing manifestations of religious and. more often, pseudoreligious feelings, it is appropriate to mention that Igor Evgenevich was a convinced and unreserved atheist.</ref><ref>Евгений Львович Фейнберг (1987). "Reminiscences about I.E. Tamm". Physics Today. Nauka. 41 (6): 82. doi:10.1063/1.2811465. Tamm's circumspect humorous reply: "Generally speaking, I am an atheist but may I give the answer next time?"</ref><ref>Evgeniĭ Lʹvovich Feĭnberg; A. V. Leonidov (2011). Physicists: Epoch and Personalities (2 ed.). World Scientific. p. 86. ISBN 978-981-283-416-4.</ref>
Arthur Tansley (1871–1955): English botanist who was a pioneer in the science of ecology.<ref>"They became correspondents and, surprisingly since Tansley was an avowed atheist, friends." – Peter G. Ayres, Shaping Ecology: The Life of Arthur Tansley, page 139.</ref>
Alfred Tarski (1901–1983): Polish logician, mathematician and philosopher, a prolific author best known for his work on model theory, metamathematics, and algebraic logic.<ref>"Most of the Socialist Party members were also in favor of assimilation, and Tarski's political allegiance was socialist at the time. So, along with its being a practical move, becoming more Polish than Jewish was an ideological statement and was approved by many, though not all, of his colleagues. As to why Tarski, a professed atheist, converted, that just came with the territory and was part of the package: if you were going to be Polish then you had to say you were Catholic." Anita Burdman Feferman, Solomon Feferman, Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic (2004), page 39.</ref>
Kip Thorne (1940–): American theoretical physicist and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics and also for the popular-science book, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy.<ref>Rory Carroll (21 June 2013). "Kip Thorne: physicist studying time travel tapped for Hollywood film". Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Thorne grew up in an academic, Mormon family in Utah but is now an atheist. "There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God."</ref>
Nikolaas Tinbergen (1907–1988): Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.<ref>Deirdre Barrett (2010). Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 21–22. ISBN 978-0-393-06848-1. Tinbergen had never been a religious man. Wartime atrocities, however, had highlighted the absence of a deity for him while both sides invoked one aligned with themselves, and this turned him into a militant atheist.</ref>
Linus Torvalds (1969–): Finnish software engineer, creator of the Linux kernel.<ref>"[I am] completely a-religious—atheist. I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both." Interview: Linus Torvalds Archived 2008-06-04 at the Wayback Machine in Linux Journal November 1, 1999. Retrieved January 18, 2007.</ref>
Alan Turing (1912–1954): English mathematician, computer scientist, and theoretical biologist who provided a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer.<ref>"Computer Scientist: ALAN TURING – TIME". 2011-01-19. Archived from the original on 2011-01-19. Retrieved 2020-01-13.</ref>
Matthew Turner (died ca. 1789): chemist, surgeon, teacher and radical theologian, author of the first published work of avowed atheism in Britain (1782).<ref>"In religion he was raised as a theist, but in 1782, in an Answer to Dr. Priestley, on the Existence of God, a response to Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, he described himself as a freethinker (p. 5). This work, first published under the pseudonym William Hammon, was subsequently republished by Richard Carlile in 1826. In the pamphlet Turner declared that he was an atheist, though he did admit that the 'vis naturae', gravity, and matter's elasticity and repulsive powers demonstrated that the universe was permeated by 'a principle of intelligence and design' (ibid., 17). Despite the 'perpetual industry' of nature, he denied that this intelligence entailed that philosophers needed to posit the existence of a deity extraneous to the material world." E. I. Carlyle, 'Turner, Matthew (d. 1789?)', rev. Kevin C. Knox, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed May 2, 2008).</ref><ref>Text of Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever at Project Guttenberg.</ref>

U

Harold Urey (1893–1981): American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, but may be most prominent for his contribution to the study of the development of organic life from non-living matter.<ref>R. L. Wysong (1976). "5: Origin of Proteins". The Creation-evolution Controversy (implications, Methodology and Survey of Evidence): Toward a Rational Solution. Wysong Institute. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-918112-02-6. Recently, at a seminar, Harold Urey, the noted scientist who won a Nobel prize for his experiments on the origin of life.... ...Dr. Urey, a somewhat outspoken confirmed atheist and evolutionist, answered:...</ref><ref>"Harold C. Urey". NNDB.com. Retrieved 18 July 2012.</ref>

V

Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943): Russian and Soviet botanist and geneticist best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. He devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops that sustain the global population.<ref>Peter Pringle (2008). The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century. Simon and Schuster. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-7432-6498-3. Despite his strict upbringing in the Orthodox Church, Vavilov had been an atheist from an early age. If he worshipped anything, it was science.</ref>
J. Craig Venter (1946–): American biologist and entrepreneur, one of the first researchers to sequence the human genome, and in 2010 the first to create a cell with a synthetic genome.<ref>Steve Kroft asked Venter on CBS' Sixty Minutes, 21 November 2010: "Do you believe in God?" Venter replied, "No. The universe is far more wonderful."</ref>
Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945): Russian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism.<ref>Lynn Margulis; Dorion Sagan (2000). What Is Life?. University of California Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-520-22021-8. Both the French paleontologist-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Russian atheist Vladimir Vernadsky agreed that Earth is developing a global mind.</ref>
Carl Vogt (1817–1895): German scientist, philosopher and politician who emigrated to Switzerland. Vogt published a number of notable works on zoology, geology and physiology.<ref>Spencer, Nick. Atheists: the Origin of the Species. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Print.</ref>

W

W. Grey Walter (1910–1977): American neurophysiologist famous for his work on brain waves, and robotician.<ref>"A firm atheist, he was interested in, though unconvinced by, the paranormal, and also did research on hypnosis." Ray Cooper, 'Walter, (William) Grey (1910–1977)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2007 (accessed May 2, 2008).</ref>
James D. Watson (1928–): Molecular biologist, physiologist, zoologist, geneticist, Nobel-laureate, and co-discover of the structure of DNA.<ref>Watson is identified as an atheist by his acquaintance, Rabbi Marc Gellman. Trying to Understand Angry Atheists: Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?, by Rabbi Marc Gellman, Newsweek, April 28, 2006. Retrieved November 11, 2006.</ref><ref>JoAnne Viviano (October 19, 2007). "Nobel Prize-winning scientist wows some, worries others". The Vindicator. Archived from the original on June 28, 2006. Retrieved 2007-10-19.</ref>
John B. Watson (1878–1958): American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism.<ref name="Buckley, Kerry W. 1989">Buckley, Kerry W. Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism. Guilford Press, 1989.</ref><ref>Gregory A. Kimble, Michael Wertheimer, Charlotte White. Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. Psychology Press, 2013, p. 175. "Watson's outspoken atheism repelled many in Greensville."</ref><ref>Michael Martin. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 310. "Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including (...) John B. Watson (...)"</ref>
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021): American theoretical physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for the unification of electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force.<ref>Azpurua: "Would it be accurate to say that you are an atheist?" Weinberg: "Yes. I don't believe in God, but I don't make a religion out of not believing in God. I don't organize my life around that." In Search of the God Particle Archived 2018-12-26 at the Wayback Machine, by Ana Elena Azpurua, Newsweek Web Exclusive, March 24, 2008, p. 3 (Accessed March 25, 2008)</ref><ref>In a review of Susskind's book The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, string theorist Michael Duff identifies Steven Weinberg as an "arch-atheist".[6]</ref><ref>In the book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins identifies Steven Weinberg as an atheist.richarddawkins.net Archived 2008-06-02 at the Wayback Machine.</ref>
Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002): Austrian-American theoretical physicist, co-founder and board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.<ref>"...Victor Weisskopf, who describes himself as an atheist Viennese Jew...." Quoting from page 14 of The Prism of Science, by Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Springer, 1986.</ref>
Frank Whittle (1907–1996): English aerospace engineer, inventor, aviator and Royal Air Force officer. He is credited with independently inventing the turbojet engine (some years earlier than Germany's Dr. Hans von Ohain) and is regarded by many as the father of jet propulsion.<ref>John Golley (2010). Jet: Frank Whittle and the Invention of the Jet Engine. Eloy Gutierrez. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-907472-00-8. Although he had occasionally cut Church Parade, he had once held very strong religious beliefs, but these had eroded to such an extent that he had come to regard himself as an atheist. "By degrees", he said "I was forced to the conclusion that my beliefs were inconsistent with scientific teaching. Once the seeds of doubt were sown the whole structure of my former religious beliefs rapidly collapsed, and I swung to the other extreme".</ref>
Eugene Wigner (1902–1995): Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, engineer and mathematician. He received half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles".<ref>Eugene Paul Wigner, Andrew Szanton (1992). Andrew Szanton (ed.). The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner As Told to Andrew Szanton. Basic Books. pp. 60–61. ISBN 9780306443268. Neither did I want to be a clergyman. I liked a good sermon. But religion tells people how to behave and that I could never do. Clergymen also had to assume and advocate the presence of God, and proofs of God's existence seemed to me quite unsatisfactory. People claimed that He had made our earth. Well, how had He made it? With an earth-making machine? Someone once asked Saint Augustine, "What did the Lord do before he created the world?" And Saint Augustine is said to have answered, "He created Hell for people who ask such questions." A retort perhaps made in jest, but I knew of none better. I saw that I could not know anything of God directly, that His presence was a matter of belief, I did not have that belief, and preaching without belief is repulsive. So I could not be a clergyman, however many people might gain salvation. And my parents never pressed the point.</ref>
Arnold Wolfendale (1927–2020): British astronomer who served as Astronomer Royal from 1991 to 1995, and was Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics at Durham University.<ref> https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunderland-echo/20110218/282883727206344 – via PressReader. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)</ref>
Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS British FRSL (1929–2021): developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster.<ref>"I grew up in a Jewish family but I gave it all up at 16 when I prayed to God for something I really wanted and it didn't happen. I have been an atheist ever since. I believe in proof and I know of no evidence for the existence of God, but I am in no way hostile to religion provided it does not interfere in the lives of others or come into conflict with science." Easter special: I believe..., Independent on Sunday, April 16, 2006 (accessed April 18, 2008).</ref>
Steve Wozniak (1950–): co-founder of Apple Computer and inventor of the Apple I and Apple II.<ref name="Steve Wozniak">Wozniak, Steven. "Letters – General Questions Answered". woz.org. Archived from the original on 2007-09-16. Retrieved 2007-09-26. ... I am also atheist or agnostic (I don't even know the difference). I've never been to church and prefer to think for myself. I do believe that religions stand for good things, and that if you make irrational sacrifices for a religion, then everyone can tell that your religion is important to you and can trust that your most important inner faiths are strong.</ref>
Elizur Wright (1804–1885): American mathematician and abolitionist, sometimes described as the "father of life insurance" for his pioneering work on actuarial tables.<ref>Howard B. Rock; Paul A. Gilje; Robert Asher, eds. (1995). American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750–1850. JHU Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8018-5029-5. Wright was the son of a Connecticut farmer and teacher who moved his family to the Ohio frontier in 1810 to start a farm and open an academy. He was a quirky man who rejected evangelicalism for atheism, and Garrisonianism for the Liberty party, and then the Free Soilers.</ref><ref>In Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse, Wright's biographer Lawrence B. Goodheart describes him as "an evangelical atheist, an impassioned actuary, a liberal who advocated state regulation, an individualist who championed social cooperation, and a very private public crusader" (op. cit., page x)</ref>

Z

Oscar Zariski (1899–1986): American mathematician and one of the most influential algebraic geometers of the 20th century.<ref>Carol Parikh (2008). The Unreal Life of Oscar Zariski. Springer. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-387-09429-8. And yet it did, even though since moving into the boarding house he had become an atheist and most of his friends, including his best friend, were Russians.</ref>
Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich (1914–1987): Soviet physicist born in Belarus. He played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, and made important contributions to the fields of adsorption and catalysis, shock waves, nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics, physical cosmology, and general relativity.<ref>Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich (2004). R.A. Sunyaev (ed.). Zeldovich: Reminiscences. CRC Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-415-28790-6. I think that you know me well enough: I am an absolute atheist, and all days of the week are completely the same to me.</ref><ref>Andrei Sakharov: Facets of a Life. Atlantica Séguier Frontières. 1991. p. 599. ISBN 978-2-86332-096-9. Speaking about religion, Yakov Borisovich could say unambiguously, "I'm an absolute atheist".</ref>
Emile Zuckerkandl (1922–2013): Austrian-born biologist who is considered one of the founders of the field of molecular evolution, who co-introduced the concept of the "molecular clock", which enabled the neutral theory of molecular evolution.<ref>David Klinghoffer. "Darwin Would Put God Out of Business". Beliefnet, Inc. Retrieved 21 May 2013. The author is Emile Zuckerkandl of Stanford University. Prof. Zuckerkandl ferociously attacks ID and any belief in a designer, God, or other "superghost".</ref>
Konrad Zuse (1910–1995): German civil engineer, inventor and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. He is regarded as one of the inventors of the modern computer.<ref>Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer. Random House Digital, Inc. ISBN 978-0-385-52713-2.</ref><ref>Konrad Zuse (1993). The Computer, My Life. Springer. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-3-540-56453-9.</ref>
Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974): Swiss astronomer and astrophysicist.<ref>Oliver Knill (14 July 1998). "Supernovae, an alpine climb and space travel". Retrieved 21 June 2013. Zwicky has dealt critically with religion during his whole life. (Source: "Everybody a genius"). In a diary entry of 1971, he writes "To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle God is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker".</ref><ref>Swiss-American Historical Society (2006). Newsletter, Volumes 42–43. The Society. p. 17. Zwicky has dealt critically with religion during his whole life. A 1971 diary entry states: "To base the inexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature upon another miracle, God, is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker." According to one story, Zwicky once discussed the beginning of the universe with a priest. The priest, quoting Scriptures, stated that the universe had started with "and there is light." Zwicky replied that he would buy this, if instead God had said "and there is electronmagnetism".</ref>

Notes and references

External links

Twentieth Century Atheists on University of Cambridge's investigating atheism website^{[dead link]}

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