Augustine Pamplany CST
Christian Anfinsen (1916-1995) was an American scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972. He made many pioneering contributions to the study of enzymes. He was awarded the Noble Prize, according to the Nobel committee, for his “for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation.” He shared the Nobel Prize with Stanford Moore and William Howard Stein.
He obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard University. He served as Professor of Chemistry at Harvard and Pennsylvania Universities. He was the elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1963 and was the elected President of the American Society of Biological Chemists during 1971-72.
Though brought up in the Lutheran tradition, he had been an agnostic until late1970s. His study of religion led to his conversion to Judaism and he was fond of the religious fervour of traditional Judaism. The saying of Einstein that “The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical,”left a deep impression in him. He promoted the above mentioned quote of Einstein very much. When he was asked of his ideas of God, he said, “I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.”
What led him to such a bold conviction was his own scientific understanding of the marvellous coding and design in the protein molecules, which he compared to the unfolding of a musical melody. He said, “It struck me recently, that one should really consider the sequence of a protein molecule about to fold into a precise geometric form as a line of melody written in a canon form & so designed by Nature to fold back into itself, creating harmonic chords of interaction consistent with biological function.”
In 1997, when Margenau and Varghese collected the opinions of the scientists on God and faith, for their book, Cosmos, Bios and Theos,Anfinsen sent the above quote of Einstein as expressing his own views: “…. He to whom this emotion (mystical sense) is a stranger, who can no longer stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe, forms my idea of God.” He added the following: “I can think of little more to add to my final point having to do with the nature of God and the existence of God. Clearly, an all-powerful, all-knowing entity must exist to explain our existence.”
