A Great Catholic Scientist.

New Zealand Tablet, 9 July 1908, Page 9

A Great Catholic Scientist.

Tiie Paris ' Univers ' of May 5 announces the passing of the illustrious geologist, M. -Lapparent..- His . death is a blow to the. Catholic - and the scientific world ; for he . belonged not to France alone, nor even to the . Church alone, but to the world. Lapparenfc was tone of -the brilliant line of Christian scientists like, Galileo, Newton, Tyclio, Brahe, Kepler, Clavius/ Ricci, Secchi, Halley, Bessel, Herschel, Huyghens, Piazzi, Leverrier.'Frauenhofer, Ohm, Coulomb, Faraday, Roentgen, Clerk .Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, Lyell, Agassiz, Romanies,, .©"ana, Asa Gray, -and (not to mention many others) the devout Pasteur, whose monument, by virtue of the directions of the will, is a Catholic chapel in which the " Clean Oblation is offered for "the repose of his soul and for the success of the work which he founded. Intellectually, Lapparent had no sympathywith those whose minds, ill-attuned to the cogent logic; of all that is behind the phenomena of senser stand, * Unmoved amidst this mighty all, j Deaf to the universal call. The deeper the depths of science which he sounded, the more clearly he saw there the creating power and the guiding Mind of the Great First Cause. .He was (says the ' Univers ') •an eminent savant, - a . declared Catholic, a firm and brilliant defender of our religious beliefs and of our civil liberties '. - .He was scarcely out of his • teens • when his brilliant promises as a geologist won him the distinction of being engaged with Elie de Beaumont as a collaborator in the drawing up of a geological map of France. In 1867 ( (he was then in his twenty-eighth year) he became secretary of the French Geological Society. In 1875 ,he renounced a bright and lucrative official career to be^ come professor of geology and mineralogy in the newly founded Catholic University of Paris.. It was in the halls of that "institute of* learning that the present writer first met M. Lapparent. His work there? was of the first rant of scientific teaching- and won for him- high honors in the world of research., Numerous scientific works issued from his pen, and in them (especially in his noted works on geology)., he. finds everywhere the finger of the Creator and demonstrates what he describes as ' the admirable unity" and simplicity of the plan of creation '. Despite the heavy demands of his professional work, this • great Catholic scientist found time to interest himself a actively in works *bf_Catholic education and charity." ' -Like his illustrious contemporary, Pasteur, he was a devout and faithful CatholiG, and passed away strengthened by the grace of the last Sacraments. • "'" ' •