-“Vitruvian Man“, Leonardo da Vinci, 1490, pen and ink with wash over metalpoint on paper, 34.6 cm × 25.5 cm (13.6 in × 10.0 in), Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

The ancient world was fascinated by symmetry (think classical architecture/statuary) in nature, not only for its beauty, but also for its potential revelations regarding the transcendent (God): the movements of the planets, originally attempted to be understood as circles in Ptolemaic Egypt, but eventually and correctly understood as elipses, but still. This was true especially human symmetry and dimensions: foot (length), pound (weight), etc. Considering how many contemporaries we are acquainted with who consider themselves the center of the universe, this ancient view seems quite logical/rational/reasonable. In fact, before metric, all measurements were based on human dimension. And, this symmetry should be unquestionably in architecture, to the ancient mind. What other conclusion was possible? The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius (from whence cometh the name) in Book III of his treatise De architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the classical orders of architecture. (As Plato, Socrates, Aristotle sought the fundamental forms – theory of forms, to understand the physical and the transcendent) Somewhat like any academic question posed which no one can answer for hundreds of years, even though academic fame and financial prizes incentivize, the geometric problem of how does one fit the human dimension in the geometric ideals of the square and the circle? Every attempt had ASSUMED the centers of the circle and the square and the human to be concentric. da Vinci finally, brilliantly, simply realized the problem was solvable if the square was NOT concentric, but if its center were shifted down.

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Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799) – mathematician who wrote on differential and integral calculus
Georgius Agricola (1494–1555) – father of mineralogy[5]
Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915) – credited with identifying the first published case of presenile dementia, which is now known as Alzheimer’s disease[6]
André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) – one of the main discoverers of electromagnetism
Leopold Auenbrugger (1722–1809) – first to use percussion as a diagnostic technique in medicine
Adrien Auzout (1622–1691) – astronomer who contributed to the development of the telescopic micrometer
Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856) – Italian scientist noted for contributions to molecular theory and Avogadro’s Law
Francisco J. Ayala (1934–present) – Spanish-American biologist and philosopher at the University of California, Irvine
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Jacques Babinet (1794–1872) – French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who is best known for his contributions to optics
Stephen M. Barr (1953–present) – professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware and a member of its Bartol Research Institute
Joachim Barrande (1799–1883) – French geologist and paleontologist who studied fossils from the Lower Palaeozoic rocks of Bohemia
Laura Bassi (1711–1778) – physicist at the University of Bologna and Chair in experimental physics at the Bologna Institute of Sciences, the first woman to be offered a professorship at a European university
Antoine César Becquerel (1788–1878) – pioneer in the study of electric and luminescent phenomena
Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) – awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his co-discovery of radioactivity
Carlo Beenakker (1960 – present) – professor at Leiden University and leader of the university’s mesoscopic physics group, established in 1992.
Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823) – prolific Italian explorer and pioneer archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities
Pierre-Joseph van Beneden (1809–1894) – Belgian zoologist and paleontologist who established one of the world’s first marine laboratories and aquariums
John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) – British pioneer in X-ray crystallography in molecular biology
Claude Bernard (1813–1878) – physiologist who helped to apply scientific methodology to medicine
Jacques Philippe Marie Binet (1786–1856) – mathematician known for Binet’s formula and his contributions to number theory
Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862) – physicist who established the reality of meteorites and studied polarization of light
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (1777–1850) – zoologist and anatomist who coined the term paleontology and described several new species of reptiles
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) – often referred to as the father of modern biomechanics
Raoul Bott (1923–2005) – mathematician known for numerous basic contributions to geometry in its broad sense
Marcella Boveri (1863–1950) – Biologist and first woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Theodor Boveri (1862–1915) – The first to hypothesize the celluar processes that cause cancer
Louis Braille (1809–1852) – inventor of the Braille reading and writing system
Edouard Branly (1844–1940) – inventor and physicist known for his involvement in wireless telegraphy and his invention of the Branly coherer
James Britten (1846–1924) – botanist, member of the Catholic Truth Society and Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great
Hermann Brück (1905–2000) – Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1957–1975; honored by Pope John Paul II
Albert Brudzewski (c. 1445–c.1497) – first to state that the Moon moves in an ellipse
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) – one of the pioneers of natural history, especially through his monumental Histoire Naturelle
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Nicola Cabibbo (1935–2010): Italian physicist, discoverer of the universality of weak interactions (Cabibbo angle), President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 1993 until his death
Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) – awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for pioneering vascular suturing techniques
John Casey (mathematician) (1820–1891) – Irish geometer known for Casey’s theorem
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712) – first to observe four of Saturn’s moons and the co-discoverer of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter
Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789–1857) – mathematician who was an early pioneer in analysis
Andrea Cesalpino (c.1525–1603) – botanist who also theorized on the circulation of blood
Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) – published the first translation of the Rosetta Stone
Michel Chasles (1793–1880) – mathematician who elaborated on the theory of modern projective geometry and was awarded the Copley Medal
Guy de Chauliac (c.1300–1368) – the most eminent surgeon of the Middle Ages
Albert Claude (1899–1983) – awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his contributions to cytology
Mateo Realdo Colombo (1516–1559) – discovered the pulmonary circuit, which paved the way for Harvey’s discovery of circulation
Arthur W. Conway (1876–1950) – remembered for his application of biquaternion algebra to the special theory of relativity
E. J. Conway (1894–1968) – Irish biochemist known for works pertaining to electrolyte physiology and analytical chemistry
Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896–1984) – shared the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his wife for their discovery of the Cori cycle
Gerty Cori (1896–1957) – biochemist who was the first American woman win a Nobel Prize in science (1947)
Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis (1792–1843) – formulated laws regarding rotating systems, which later became known as the Corialis effect
Domenico Cotugno (1736–1822) – Italian anatomist who discovered the nasopalatine nerve, demonstrated the existence of the labyrinthine fluid, and formulated a theory of resonance and hearing, among other important contributions
Maurice Couette (1858–1943) – best known for his contributions to rheology and the theory of fluid flow; appointed a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Pius XI in 1925
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736–1806) – physicist known for developing Coulomb’s law
Clyde Cowan (1919–1974) – Co-discoverer of the neutrino
Jean Cruveilhier (1791–1874) – Made important contributions to the study of the nervous system and was the first to describe the lesions associated with multiple sclerosis; originally planned to enter the priesthood
Endre Czeizel (1935-2015) – Discovered that folic acid prevents or reduces the formation of more serious developmental disorders, such as neural tube defects like spina bifida
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Gabriel Auguste Daubrée (1814–1896) – pioneer in the application of experimental methods to the study of diverse geologic phenomena
René Descartes (1596–1650) – father of modern philosophy and analytic geometry
César-Mansuète Despretz (1791–1863) – chemist and physicist who investigated latent heat, the elasticity of vapors, the compressibility of liquids, and the density of gases[25]
Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805–1859) – mathematician who contributed to number theory and was one of the first to give the modern formal definition of a function
Ignacy Domeyko (1802–1889) – Polish scientist who made major contributions to the study of Chile’s geography, geology, and mineralogy
Christian Doppler (1803–1853) – Austrian physicist and mathematician who enunciated the Doppler effect
Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) – historian of science who made important contributions to hydrodynamics, elasticity, and thermodynamics
Félix Dujardin (1801–1860) – biologist remembered for his research on protozoans and other invertebrates; became a devout Catholic later in life and was known to read The Imitation of Christ
Jean-Baptiste Dumas (1800–1884) – chemist who established new values for the atomic mass of thirty elements
André Dumont (1809–1857) – Belgian geologist who prepared the first geological map of Belgium and named many of the subdivisions of the Cretaceous and Tertiary
Charles Dupin (1784–1873) – mathematician who discovered the Dupin cyclide and the Dupin indicatrix
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John Eccles (1903–1997) – Awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the synapse
Stephan Endlicher (1804–1849) – botanist who formulated a major system of plant classification
Gerhard Ertl (1936–present) – German physicist who won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces[30]
Bartolomeo Eustachi (c.1500–1574) – one of the founders of human anatomy
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Hieronymus Fabricius (1537–1619) – father of embryology
Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562) – pioneering Italian anatomist who studied the human ear and reproductive organs
Mary Celine Fasenmyer (1906–1996) – Religious sister and mathematician, founder of Sister Celine’s polynomials
Hervé Faye (1814–1902) – astronomer whose discovery of the periodic comet 4P/Faye won him the 1844 Lalande Prize and membership in the French Academy of Sciences
Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665) – number theorist who contributed to the early development of calculus
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) – awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his work in induced radioactivity
Jean Fernel (1497–1558) – physician who introduced the term physiology
Fibonacci (c.1170–c.1250) – popularized Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe and discovered the Fibonacci sequence
Hippolyte Fizeau (1819–1896) – first person to determine experimentally the velocity of light
Léon Foucault (1819–1868) – invented the Foucault pendulum to measure the effect of the earth’s rotation
Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826) – discovered Fraunhofer lines in the sun’s spectrum
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) – made significant contributions to the theory of wave optics
Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs (1774–1856) – confirmed the stoichiometric laws and observed isomorphism and the cation exchange of zeolites
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Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) – father of modern science
Luigi Galvani (1737–1798) – formulated the theory of animal electricity
William Gascoigne (1610–1644) – developed the first micrometer
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850) – chemist known for two laws related to gases
Riccardo Giacconi (1931–present) – Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy
Paula González (1932–present) – Religious sister and professor of biology
Peter Grünberg (1939–present) – German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate
Johannes Gutenberg (c.1398–1468) – inventor of the printing press
Samuel Stehman Haldeman (1812–1880) – American naturalist and convert to Catholicism who researched fresh-water mollusks, the human voice, Amerindian dialects, and the organs of sound of insects
Jean Baptiste Julien d’Omalius d’Halloy (1783–1875) – one of the pioneers of modern geology
Eduard Heis (1806–1877) – astronomer who contributed the first true delineation of the Milky Way
Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644) – founder of pneumatic chemistry
George de Hevesy (1885–1966) – Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel laureate
Charles Hermite (1822–1901) – mathematician who did research on number theory, quadratic forms, elliptic functions, and algebra
John Philip Holland (1840–1914) – developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the US Navy
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836) – first to propose a natural classification of flowering plants
Mary Kenneth Keller (c.1914–1985) – Sister of Charity and first American woman to earn a PhD in computer science, helped develop BASIC
Brian Kobilka (1955–present) – American Nobel Prize winning professor who teaches at Stanford University School of Medicine
René Laennec (1781–1826) – physician who invented the stethoscope
Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) – mathematician and astronomer known for Lagrangian points and Lagrangian mechanics
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) – French naturalist, biologist and academic whose theories on evolution preceded those of Darwin
Johann von Lamont (1805–1879) – astronomer and physicist who studied the magnetism of the Earth and was the first to calculate the mass of Uranus
Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943) – Nobel Prize winner who identified and classified the human blood types
Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833) – pioneer in entomology
Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) – father of modern chemistry
Jérôme Lejeune (1926–1994) – pediatrician and geneticist, best known for his discovery of the link of diseases to chromosome abnormalities
Jonathan Lunine (1959–present) – planetary scientist at the forefront of research into planet formation, evolution, and habitability; serves as vice-president of the Society of Catholic Scientists
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Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) – father of comparative physiology
Étienne-Louis Malus (1775–1812) – discovered the polarization of light
Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–1774) – anatomist and anatomical wax artist who lectured at the University of Bologna
Giovanni Manzolini (1700–1755) – anatomical wax artist and Professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna
Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) – father of wireless technology and radio transmission
Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) – known for the Maupertuis principle and for being the first president of the Berlin Academy of Science
Michele Mercati (1541–1593) – one of the first to recognize prehistoric stone tools as man-made
Charles W. Misner (1932–present) – American cosmologist dedicated to the study of general relativity
Kenneth R. Miller (1948–present) – American cell biologist and molecular biologist who teaches at Brown University
Mario J. Molina (1943–present) – Mexican chemist, one of the precursors to the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole (1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry)
Peter Joseph Moloney (1891–1989) – Canadian immunologist and pioneering vaccine researcher, who worked out the first large-scale purification of insulin in 1922; International Gairdner Award, 1967)[43]
Gaspard Monge (1746–1818) – father of descriptive geometry
John J. Montgomery (1858–1911) – American physicist and inventor of gliders and aerodynamics
Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682–1771) – father of modern anatomical pathology
Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858) – founder of modern physiology
Joseph Murray (1919–2012) – Nobel Prize in Medicine laureate
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John von Neumann (1903–1957) – Hungarian-born American mathematician and polymath who converted to Catholicism
Martin Nowak (1965–present) – evolutionary theorist and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University; serves on the board of the Society of Catholic Scientists
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Karin Öberg (1982–present) – her Öberg Astrochemistry Group discovered the first complex organic molecule in a protoplanetary disk; serves on the board of the Society of Catholic Scientists
Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) – created the first modern atlas and theorized on continental drift
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Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) – French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) – father of bacteriology
Pierre Joseph Pelletier (1788–1842) – co-discovered strychnine, caffeine, quinine, cinchonine, among many other discoveries in chemistry
Georg von Peuerbach (1423–1461) – called the father of mathematical and observational astronomy in the West
Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) – Hungarian polymath, made contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy
Vladimir Prelog (1906–1998) – Croatian-Swiss organic chemist, winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize for chemistry
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Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) – awarded the Nobel Prize for his contributions to neuroscience
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757) – scientific polymath known especially for his study of insects
Francesco Redi (1626–1697) – his experiments with maggots were a major step in overturning the idea of spontaneous generation
Henri Victor Regnault (1810–1878) – chemist with two laws governing the specific heat of gases named after him
Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro (1853–1925) – one of the founders of tensor calculus
Gilles de Roberval (1602–1675) – mathematician who studied the geometry of infinitesimals and was one of the founders of kinematic geometry
Frederick Rossini (1899–1990) – Priestley Medal and Laetare Medal-winning chemist
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Paul Sabatier (chemist) (1854–1941) – awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work improving the hydrogenation of organic species in the presence of metals
Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant (1797–1886) – Remembered for Saint-Venant’s principle, Saint-Venant’s theorem, and Saint-Venant’s compatibility condition; given the title Count by Pope Pius IX in 1869
Theodor Schwann (1810–1882) – founder of the theory of the cellular structure of animal organisms
Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) – early pioneer of antiseptic procedures, discoverer of the cause of puerperal fever
Louis Jacques Thénard (1777–1857) – discovered hydrogen peroxide and contributed to the discovery of boron
Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647) – inventor of the barometer
Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–1482) – Italian mathematician, astronomer and cosmographer
Richard Towneley (1629–1707) – mathematician and astronomer whose work contributed to the formulation of Boyle’s Law
Louis René Tulasne (1815–1885) – biologist with several genera and species of fungi named after him
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Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829) – discovered the chemical element beryllium
Urbain Le Verrier (1811–1877) – mathematician who predicted the discovery of Neptune
Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) – father of modern human anatomy
François Viète (1540–1603) – father of modern algebra
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) – Renaissance anatomist, scientist, mathematician, and painter
Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703) – mathematician known for Viviani’s theorem, Viviani’s curve and his work in determining the speed of sound
Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) – physicist known for the invention of the battery
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Wilhelm Heinrich Waagen (1841–1900) – geologist and paleontologist who provided the first example of evolution described from the geologic record, after studying Jurassic ammonites
Karl Weierstrass (1815–1897) – often called the father of modern analysis
E. T. Whittaker (1873–1956) – English mathematician who made contributions to applied mathematics and mathematical physics
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) – one of the founders of scientific archaeology
Bertram Windle (1858–1929) – anthropologist, physician, and former president of University College Cork
Jacob B. Winslow (1669–1760) – convert to Catholicism who was regarded as the greatest European anatomist of his day
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Antonino Zichichi (1929–present) – Italian nuclear physicist, former President of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare