A number of religious people throughout history have turned to science to better understand God. Australian Catholics recognises some of the most influential.
Lunar pioneer
Giovanni Battista Riccioli
(17 April, 1598 - 25 June, 1671)
Before Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, astronomers such as Riccioli helped map its terrain. He worked closely with Francesco Maria Grimaldi, also an Italian Jesuit, in mapping the moon's surface. Scientists today identify lunar features using names provided by these two astronomers. (He named craters after Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Lansbergius, who were all proponents of heliocentrism, though he himself opposed it in public).
Groundwork
Blessed Nicolas Steno
(11 January, 1638 -25 November, 1686)
Many scientists were looking up, but Steno was one of the first to look down. He was a Danish Lutheran who converted to Catholicism. Due to his early work on fossils, he is credited as the father of geology and founded three defining principles of stratigraphy, which is the study of rock layers and sedimentation. His theory that fossils represent a chronology of different living creatures from different eras laid the foundation for Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Geometry
Ruder Josip Boskovic
(8 May, 1711 -13 February, 1787)
Described as a polymath, he devised the geometry for calculating the equator and orbit of planets. His atomic theory is also credited by famous scientist Nikolai Tesla as the precursor of Einstein's own theory of relativity. Boskovian theory inspired a number of 19th century physicists such as Michael Faraday to develop their work in electromagnetics. Best new idea.
Genetics
Gregor Mendel
(July 20, 1822- January 6, 1884)
An Austrian Augustinian monk, Mendel studied the traits of pea plants and laid the foundation for genetic science. His findings on inheritance and hybridisation are considered seminal, though interestingly, most of his published work was on meteorology.
Science and philosophy
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1 May, 1881 -10 April, 1955) A palaeontologist and geologist, he was involved in the investigation of fossil specimens, 'The Piltdown Man' (later found to be a hoax) and 'The Peking Man'. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal-driven way, toward what he called The Omega Point. His writings on this and other matters were highly controversial within the Church during his life and even after his death, though Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict recently indicated acceptance of some of his ideas.
Revolutionary idea. The Copernican Model
Nicolaus Copernicus
(19 February, 1473 -24 May, 1543)
Born in Poland, this Renaissance astronomer was the first to offer a full mathematical model for placing the sun at the centre of the universe, thus displacing the earth. This heliocentric cosmology was revolutionary and led to the debunking of other doctrines from Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages. Galileo Galilei's observations later supported the Copernican proposition.
Misleading title. 'Occam's Razor'
William of Occam
(c. 1288-c. 1348)
No, this isn't a blade used to shave a person's face, but a methodological principle. Occam's Razor holds that when given hypotheses are similar, the most obvious one - which presents the fewest new assumptions - must be the right one. An English Franciscan friar, Occam was one of the Medieval era's most influential thinkers.