Galileo Galilei—considered the father of modern science—was once president of the Academy of Lynxes and used the name Galileo Galilei Linceo on the title pages of his works in its honor.

The Academy of Lynxes—a 17th-century science academy—was cofounded by an 18-year-old whose father suspected he was associating with sorcerers and magicians.

Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons led to multiple scientific advancements

Beyond challenging Earth-centric views upon their discovery in 1610, the Galilean moons were also later analyzed to contribute to early astrometry and astronomical interferometry. Measurements of eclipses were also used to estimate the speed of light.

Galileo's Jupiter discovery shattered Earth-centered universe beliefs

Using a telescope inspired by Dutch designs, Galileo spotted four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610, providing undeniable evidence against geocentrism and fueled support for the heliocentric model. Galileo’s original telescope design stretched 20 meters long—a feat of optical engineering for its time.

Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest who proposed the Big Bang theory in 1931, became president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1960.

The Pius XI Medal—named after the pope who rebranded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936—has been awarded every two years to a promising scientist under 45.

Explore the list of Pontifical Academicians that make up the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Watch a video overview of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which advises the pope on science, from one of its Nobel Prize-winning members.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the only supranational academy of sciences in the world, with its members giving up some of their sovereignty to achieve shared objectives.

The Lucasian Chair is among the most prestigious academic positions in science

Once held by icons like Newton, Dirac, and Hawking, the position was founded in 1663. "Star Trek" imagined the Lucasian Chair’s future holder as the android Data, cementing its mythos across scientific and science fiction realms.

Four astronomical discoveries from ancient Greece

Modern astronomy relies on making discoveries without being present on the planets, stars, galaxies, and other objects studied. Imagine the difficulty the ancient Greeks had studying them without computers and telescopes. Yet somehow they calculated precise measurements of planetary distances, sizes, and more. Read this page to learn more about early triumphs in astronomical science.

The scientific name for northern lights came from two Greco-Roman gods

Although cave paintings may have depicted them millennia earlier, one of the oldest known references to auroras is a Babylonian cuneiform tablet from about 600 BCE. In 1619, Galileo Galilei named the phenomenon in the northern hemisphere "aurora borealis" after the Roman goddess of dawn—Aurora—and the Greek god of the north wind—Boreas.

As of 2026, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which advises the pope on scientific matters, has included 90 Nobel laureates among its members.

Ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus created accurate maps of the night sky way ahead of his time, with coordinates sometimes within a single degree of modern values.

The term 'scientist' was coined in a 1834 book review by English polymath William Whewell, who needed an alternative to 'man of science' to describe Scottish writer Mary Somerville.

Ancient Greek told to kick rocks after claiming moon wasn't a deity

About 2,500 years ago, ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras theorized that the moon probably wasn't a goddess. This article explains how this belief led to his exile. Anaxagoras also argued the sun was just a burning rock, writing that it was the sun that illuminated the moon. According to this resource, this theory enabled Anaxagoras to accurately explain eclipses and lunar cycles.

View historical records of solar observations and discoveries, from telescopes in the early 1600s revealing sunspots to NASA's Parker Solar Probe photographing the sun from within its outer corona in 2025.

Astronomers inferred Neptune's existence through mathematics while attempting to explain irregularities in Uranus' orbit, but Neptune had been directly observed 234 years earlier by Galileo.

Nancy Roman, NASA's first chief of astronomy and the architect of the Hubble Space Telescope, was discouraged from pursuing science throughout her academic career.

New ways of seeing the cosmos have redrawn the map of human identity

From Galileo’s crude spyglass to the James Webb Space Telescope, each technological leap has expanded our observational reach and redefined philosophical and moral conceptions of our place in the universe. Identifying signs of life through the study of exoplanet atmospheres would represent the next great revolution.

Scientists validated Albert Einstein's theory of gravity by measuring the apparent positions of stars via their starlight as it traveled near the sun on its way to Earth during a total solar eclipse.

Nicknamed the 'mother of Hubble,' Nancy Roman gave lectures on the potential of space science, coordinated between astronomers and engineers, and secured government funding for the space telescope.

From the Greek for 'star taker,' the astrolabe allowed individuals to tell time and determine their latitude based on the position of the sun or other stars, as well as calculate the height of objects.

Credit for inventing the laser was fought over for nearly three decades

Although Theodore Maiman built the first working laser in 1960, Gordon Gould coined the term earlier. Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow of Bell Labs filed a patent after Gould came up with the idea and name, but before Gould filed his patent.

Socrates, who never wrote down his ideas, is considered by many the father of Western philosophy.

The 'Celestial Police' accidentally discovered asteroids while planet hunting

The group was formed in 1800 to find a planet some astronomers believed existed between Mars and Jupiter. Prior to their disbanding in 1815, the group instead discovered Vesta, Juno, and other objects they would call asteroids.

A Belgian Catholic priest was the first to come up with the idea for the Big Bang

In 1931, Georges Lemaître presented his radical idea that the universe came from a “primeval atom,” challenging the long-held belief that the universe had always existed. Einstein initially dismissed Lemaître’s work as having “abominable” physical insight, only to accept it later.

Scientists used to speculate about life on the moon

In the 17th century, Galileo's observations suggested the moon could be inhabited, leading to fictional speculations about lunar life. In the 19th century, stories were published claiming the discovery of various creatures, including human bats. The Apollo missions in the 20th century explored the possibility of life there, but further exploration showed this idea to be less likely than before.

Browse the published volumes from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences—the Vatican's scientific advisory board.

Aristotle discovered that Earth was spherical by observing the round shadow it cast on the moon during lunar eclipses and by noting that different constellations were visible from different latitudes.

How the months of the year got named

Curious about how the months got their names? This article from The Old Farmer's Almanac explores the origins of today’s Gregorian calendar. Based on the ancient Roman lunar calendar, the months were named after Roman gods until winter when the names changed to numerical titles. Read along to learn the significance and intentions behind labeling each lunar cycle.

In the third century BCE, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos estimated the distance to the moon using geometry after measuring the length of Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse.

Halley's comet is named after the astronomer who predicted its next appearance

Edmund Halley realized that historical accounts of a celestial object passing in the night sky in 1531 and 1607 referred to the same object he observed in 1682. By applying Newtonian mechanics to his observational data, he calculated its orbit and accurately predicted its return in 1758.

The ancient Greeks and Romans viewed comets and meteors as divine omens

Both considered the appearance of a comet or its fragments as a precursor to significant events, such as the birth of a notable figure or the death of a ruler. One observed in 44 BCE was believed to be a sign of the deification of Julius Caesar after his assassination.

William Blake may be best known as a poet, but he was also a painter

The author of "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" was a romantic poet and painter. "Newton," one of his better-known pieces, satirizes Isaac Newton, whom he saw as too concerned with the empiricism of science and, as a result, lacking an understanding of nature.

January is named after Janus, the Roman god of transitions

In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, which established Jan. 1 as the beginning of the new year. The month was named after Janus, the Roman god of transitions, who had two faces—one looking back at the past, the other forward to the future. While the Babylonians also made promises as part of their celebration of the new year, the Roman tradition became more focused on looking backwards to plan for the coming year.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward Larson explores the Scopes Monkey Trial

The 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial was referred to as the "Trial of the Century" at the time, and has been since viewed as one of the origins of modern culture wars. A symbolic clash between science and religion during a period of rapid cultural change, the case became a flashpoint of differing ideologies.

The ancient Roman origins of the leap year

The earth's orbit around the sun takes about 365.2422 days, leaving farmer almanacs the awful job of pretending the calendar year fits into a whole number. This article explores the modern origins of the civil solar calendar and its leap year. The Julian calendar, named after the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, cut the calendar year into 365.25 days, gifting the public an extra day every four years. Learn more of the history here.

When Marcus Aurelius created endowed philosophy chairs in Athens

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is known as one of the most famous Stoic writers or thinkers, penning his classic opus ‘Meditations.’ In 176 CE, he endowed four philosophy chairs in Athens: one for Stoicism, and one for three of Stoicism’s rival schools: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Epicureanism.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin discovered stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium

At 25, her doctoral thesis challenged the then-common belief that stars were composed similarly to Earth. Several years later, Henry Norris Russell, who had initially dismissed her findings, independently made the same discovery and received credit for it.

In 1676, Danish astronomer Ole Rømer determined that light did not travel instantaneously by observing a delay in the appearance of solar eclipses on Jupiter when it was farther from Earth.

In 2026, Pope Leo XIV published a 42,000-word document on AI, written with the advice of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Space telescope development was driven by a desire to bypass Earth's atmosphere

The most important figure in the effort to create what would become the Hubble Space Telescope was Lyman Spitzer, who first proposed a telescope in orbit in 1946. The nearly 50-year endeavor led to space-based observatories, which are not limited by Earth's atmosphere absorbing or distorting most wavelengths of light.

Nancy Roman credits observing a rare and unexpected change in the light from a pair of stars with making her well known in the astronomical community before her role at NASA.

During his 'miraculous year,' Einstein published four groundbreaking papers

The 1905 "annus mirabilis" papers explained the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the absolutism of the speed of light, and mass-energy equivalence, revolutionizing scientists' understandings of space, time, mass, and energy. For the discovery of the photoelectric effect, Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Nancy Roman's research included a paper that provided insights into the formation of the Milky Way galaxy, which the Astrophysical Journal selected as one of the 100 most important papers during its first century of publication.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the first person to successfully predict a solar eclipse was the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus in 585 BCE, with the resulting celestial event ending a half-decade-long war.

Sun Ra, a free jazz legend, claimed he was an angel

Sun Ra is one of jazz's most storied cult acts, with a career that spans multiple decades, dozens of hard-to-find self-released albums, and a sound that challenged even the most adventurous listeners. Ra, born Herman Blount, claimed to be from Saturn and once told an interviewer that "Star Wars" was "very accurate."

Solar eclipses block the sun enough to enable scientists to observe its faint outer atmosphere, or corona, whose spectrum led to the discovery of helium over a decade before it was identified on Earth.

Asteroids were discovered by 18th-century planet hunters

While looking for a planet between Mars and Jupiter to coincide with an apparent mathematical pattern in the distances of known planets from the sun, a group calling themselves the "Celestial Police" discovered multiple objects that fell into a new classification.

Raphael's Renaissance masterpiece 'The School of Athens' visually contrasts the views of philosophers Plato and Aristotle.