Augustine Pamplany CST
Victor F. Hess (1883-1964) was an Austrian-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936. He was born in Austria to Vinzenz Hess and Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt, on 24 June 1883. He did research in US from 1921 to 1923 and returned to Austria and started a teaching career at Innsbruck University. With the rise of Nazism, Hess and his Jewish wife fled to the US in 1938. He taught Physics at Fordham University.
Hess was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of cosmic rays. Before Hess, the scientific idea was that the ionizing radiation found in the atmosphere was due to earthly factors and its intensity would decrease as the altitude increases. Whereas experiments by Hess showed that the opposite is the case. Cosmic rays come from outside solar system and even outside our Galaxy. As they smash the atoms in the earth’s atmosphere, they produce cascades of charged particles which ionize the atoms in the atmosphere. Hess’s discovery opened up the age of Cosmic Ray Physics and Astroparticle Physics.
Hess was a practising Roman Catholic who thought that “a good religious education, combined with scientific training, tends to give a scientist a better understanding both of nature and of human life.” In 1946, he wrote an essay, titled, My Faith, explaining his views on the relationship between science and religion. He begins the essay with the following words: “Can a good scientist believe in God? I think the answer is: Yes. In the first place, a scientist, more than other scholars, spends his time observing nature. It is his task to help to unravel the mysteries of nature. He comes to marvel at these mysteries. Hence, it is not hard for a scientist to admire the greatness of the creator of nature. From this it is only a step to adore God.”
He confesses that his own observations of nature in his experiments on high mountains or in balloon flights made him feel being closer to God. He also held the view that “a scientist is easily led to believe in Divine Providence.” As humanity is passing through several crises like the development of nuclear weapons, a scientist has to make a choice between despair and faith, and in choosing the faith, “there must be a providence.” He regards the statistical nature of the scientific laws as a point to acknowledge the limits of scientific knowledge. “I must confess that in all my years of research in physics and geophysics, I have never found one instance in which scientific discovery was in conflict with religious Faith.”
