Augustine Pamplany CST
Antony Hewish (1924-2021) is an English Physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars.
He became the Director of the Studies in Physics at Churchill College in Cambridge and was serving as Professor of Radio Astronomy. He led the Radio astronomy group of Cambridge since 1977. His team studied the Radio waves produced by stars. He established a massive array of radio telescopes spread across five acres. His graduate student Jocelyn Bell, of whom we have already written in this series, identified a very strange signal from space. The team was astonished by the strange nature of this signal. They wondered if it would be from extra-terrestrial life. Further researches and analysis of the signals led to the discovery of first pulsar. Pulsar is a neutron star that emits electromagnetic radio beams.
Hewish had very interesting views on religion and science. As a school student he was a daily participant in the Holy Mass. It is said he had the first experience of the “mystical numinous” in the Golf field. He described it as the “the presence of a benevolent power behind the universe.”
Hewish said that physics provided him with the right mind-set to believe in the religious mysteries and it is not against common sense. As physicist and thinker, he rejected the idea of chance as the source of life. “I believe in God. It makes no sense to me to assume that the Universe and our existence is just a cosmic accident, that life emerged due to random physical processes in an environment which simply happened to have the right properties.”
He postulated a Creator of Life as he said: “As a Christian, I begin to comprehend what life is all about through belief in a Creator, some of whose nature was revealed by a man born about 2000 years ago.”
He found the need for religion for the complete explanation of the natural mysteries. “I think both science and religion are necessary to understand our relation to the Universe. In principle, Science tells us how everything works, although there are many unsolved problems and I guess there always will be. But science raises questions that it can never answer. Why did the big bang eventually lead to conscious beings who question the purpose of life and the existence of the Universe? This is where religion is necessary.” He believes Religion helps avoid selfish materialism and it helps in providing a better meaning: “Religion has a most important role in pointing out that there is more to life than selfish materialism.” Thus, for him “God is a concept which I need to cohere my total experience.”
