I blogged a bit ago saying that with I wanted to share a few picture books about learning and school, now that the 2025-2026 school year is in full swing.

Today’s book is a beautiful collection of portraits and one-page biographies of men and women scientists. Besides all of these people being scientists, they all share the common bond of having faith in God. This book shows each scientist’s path in different school settings and the kindling of their love of science, which blossomed into significant contributions to the fields of science and/or math.

Here is a summary of the book below, copied and pasted, from amazon.com:

“Help children discover how science and faith CAN coexist in this profound, inspirational picture book biography about 28 scientists who’ve also professed their faith in God.

“Can faith in God and belief in science be compatible? Might science even deepen our wonder at God’s works? Absolutely!

“From medieval physician and Jewish theologian Maimonides (1135-1204) to American immunologist Kizzmekia Shanta Corbett (born 1986), readers will meet thirty-one brilliant men and women from different countries, backgrounds, time periods, and scientific disciplines who all share one thing in common: an unshakeable faith in God.

“You may already know about scientists like Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the monk-scientist who discovered the hidden world of genetics, and Katherine Johnson (1918-2020), the African-American mathematician finally made famous in the movie Hidden Figures

“And there are some you likely never heard of like American astronomer Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) who discovered a comet in 1847, and Iranian theoretical physicist Mehdi Golshani (born 1939).

“Others include Bienvenido Nebres (born 1940), a Filipino scientist, mathematician and Jesuit priest, and Mary Higby Schweitzer (born 1955), an American paleontologist who found evidence that a T-Rex specimen was a pregnant female.

“Scientists of Faith reveals that faith in God isn’t just compatible with science―it can be a scientist’s most powerful force in the journey of discovery.”

That’s such a great truth! Let’s shout it from the rooftops!

I absolutely love this book! It’s so refreshing to learn about scientists who believe in God. I never heard about that in public school so this book is an absolute treasure to me.

Each two-page spread has a beautiful portrait of a scientist, done by illustrator William Luong, on the left-hand page with a biography of the scientist on the right hand page. The book starts with Galileo and ends with Karin Oberg. Besides all the scientists I have already mentioned, the other scientists in the book are:

-Robert Boyle

-Sir Isaac Newton

-George Washington Carver

-Dorothy Garrod

-Henry Eyring (father of Elder Henry B. Eyring, one of the apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The elder Eyring was a professor of chemistry at Princeton and then the U. of U. The first science building at BYU is named after his uncle, Carl Eyring, another scientist. I took a lot of classes there when I was a student at BYU. The building has a fabulous Foucault pendulum hanging in the foyer, btw. If you are ever in Provo, go check it out!)

-Dame Kathleen Lonsdale

-Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri

-Abdus Salam

-Mendi Golshani

-Dame Joeclyn Bell Burnell

-Georgia Mae Dunston

-Peter Dodson

-Aaron Ciechanover

-William D. Phillips

-Francis S. Collins

-Donna Strickland

-Rosalind Picard

-Katharine Hayhoe

-Jennifer Wiseman

-Suchitra Sebastian

-Omololu Fagunwa

Wow! So many names of people from all over the world for us to learn about! It’s just amazing that this book brings to light so many women and non-American scientists. Some of them are Christian, some are Muslim, and some are Jewish. They are all believers in science and God. This book is something rare for sure. It is perfect for use in a homeschooling Morning Basket. So I encourage you to get his book, either from your public library (use interlibrary loan if your library doesn’t have it, that) or from amazon, and enjoy it soon. My library didn’t have it so I requested it through interlibrary loan. Now that I’ve looked at it and read about half of it, I love it enough to buy it. I also love that it has a quote from each scientist with some aspect of faith in God, as well as an open-ended discussion on almost every other page. I’ll be using it in my LEMI Pyramid Project class this year to tell these stories to the youth.

I love the Bible scripture mentioned in the publisher’s note at the very beginning of the book: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” -Psalm 111:2. These people show how a curiosity, belief in God, and reverence for God’s creations can be a part of a scientist’s journey.