When I was little, I always asked, “Why?”
I never grew out of that, which led me to become a scientist — a professional astronomer. That has involved more travel and more Catholic connections than I ever expected.
Along the way, I have realized that the “big questions” in astronomy are often similar to the “big questions” in faith, such as, “Where did we come from?” or “How did we get here?”
Walsh Jesuit High School near Akron, Ohio, led me to dive deeply into the big questions. I then went to Ohio State, doing science and math while becoming an extraordinary minister of holy Communion in the Newman Center.
I met more student scientists with faith and was happy that at least some people didn’t think I was an atheist. I also had my first research experience, studying SS-433, an interesting black hole the mass of a big star.
In Cambridge, England, I pursued a doctorate in astronomy while learning about the very checkered and bloody past of Catholicism in England. Catholics are only about 10% of the population there, but they are devout and stick together. I met Catholic scientists and had the pleasure of serving the Novus Ordo Mass, which gave me an appreciation of my father’s serving the Tridentine Mass in his native Budapest.
My research included writing computer programs to simulate the evolution of gas clouds in intergalactic space as seen in the foreground of quasars, which are bright “lighthouse galaxies.”
After Cambridge, I moved to La Serena in Chile, a beach town 50 miles west of the big international astronomical observatory at Cerro Tololo. I did not complain about going to a Catholic country. I just needed to learn Spanish. I found a friend in a seminarian who spoke no English — perfect! The archbishop there spoke English and sometimes slipped astronomy references into his homilies.
I appreciated having Catholic holidays off and seeing religious processions, but learned that Chileans who practice their faith are very devout and are only 10-15% of the population.
I was also happy to get my hands on some of the biggest telescopes at the time, and learned how to use them to observe quasars.
The next place was Heidelberg, Germany. That was great. I have relatives in the country, and the cuisine is “home-cooking” for me. I attended the university chaplaincy there, dedicated to Edith Stein, just before she was canonized, and met more friends for life. I did more research on quasars, frequently travelling to use German time on telescopes in Spain and Chile (as Germany itself is cloudy).
Then it was on to NASA in Maryland, where I frequented the University of Maryland Catholic Student Center and also went to Hungarian- and German-language Masses in Washington. I worked with the Hubble Space Telescope team on its imaging spectrograph. I continued to study quasars and also started studying young stars because there were young star experts there. Young stars led me to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and an ultraviolet research satellite for studying them.
Lastly, I came to the University of Louisville. Here I (accidentally) started the Archdiocesan Faith & Science Dialogue Group, by inviting Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz to one of the lectures connected with the 2017 solar eclipse. He answered, and that answer has led to this archdiocese becoming a faith and science hub. It was evident at this year’s Society of Catholic Scientists “St. Albert Initiative,” where more than 400 students came to Bellarmine University for a day of discussing faith and science.
I love getting to know the Church in various countries and meeting the faithful, who teach me new ways to appreciate and connect with the Lord while chasing those big questions.
Dr. Gerry Williger is a professor of physics at the University of Louisville.
