House Names

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell was born in Ireland in 1943. Discovered the first four pulsars. Using a radio telescope that she helped build as part of her Ph.D dissertation, Bell (later Burnell) detected a rapid set of pulses occurring at regular intervals. She determined that the position of the unusual radio source remained fixed with respect to the stars, which meant that it was located beyond the solar system. During the course of the next few months, she discovered 3 more pulsating radio sources (or pulsars). These pulsars were later found to be rapidly rotating neutron stars.

Rene Descartes was a French mathematician, scientist and philosopher who has been called the father of modern philosophy. He had a deep religious faith as a Catholic. At the age of 24 he had a dream, and felt the vocational call to seek to bring knowledge together in one system of thought. His system began by asking what could be known if all else were doubted - suggesting the famous 'I think therefore I am'. Actually, it is often forgotten that the next step for Descartes was to establish the near certainty of the existence of God - for only if God both exists and would not want us to be deceived by our experiences can we trust our senses and logical thought processes. God is, therefore, central to his whole philosophy. What he really wanted was to see his philosophy adopted as standard Catholic teaching. Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) are generally regarded as the key figures in the development of scientific methodology.

Both had systems in which God was important, and both seem more devout than the average for their era.

Louis J. Pasteur was a Catholic who was born and grew up in France. A well renowned scientist Louis was professor of physics at Dijon Lycee in 1848 and later became professor of chemistry at Strasbourg University. His main areas of interest included Physics and Bacteriology. He is best known for demonstrating how to prevent milk and wine from going sour, which came to be called pasteurisation. His experiments confirmed the germ theory of disease, and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He became one of the founders of bacteriology. He also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the asymmetry of crystals.

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