SISTER MIRIAM MICHAEL STIMSON OP - CATHOLIC SCIENTISTS; DIED 15th JUNE 2002

 SISTER MIRIAM MICHAEL STIMSON OP

CATHOLIC SCIENTISTS

DIED 15th JUNE 2002

Marian Emma Stimson was born into a devout Catholic family in Chicago on December 14, 1913. She had an interest in health and medicine – her brother suffered from polio, she had a sister with a heart condition and her mother had such high blood pressure after she gave birth to twins that she suffered from memory loss.

In 1935, she joined the Adrian Dominican Sisters, taking the name Sister Miriam Michael Stimson OP.

She received a B.S. in Chemistry from Siena Heights College in 1936. She continued her studies at the Institutum Divi Thomae in Cincinnatti, where she received her M.S. in 1939.

She then joined the chemistry faculty at Siena Heights College, simultaneously working toward her Ph.D. at Institutum Divi Thomae, which she completed in 1948. She earned her Doctorate and engaged in teaching and research, studying cancer and wound healing treatments. Notably, she was instrumental in the invention of Preparation H, a haemorrhoid cream used in the treatment of healing wounds.

Laura Mast, in her article “Sister Miriam Michael Stimson turned early models of DNA inside out,” stated that “Her most important work, however, focused on infrared Spectroscopy, a technique that maps out a chemical’s structure. The atoms in a molecule are always in motion, with the chemical bonds between them constantly bending and stretching. These bends and stretches are unique to the atoms involved – a carbon to oxygen bond is different from a carbon to hydrogen bond, and a big stretch behaves differently than a little bend. These small differences allow us to map out what a complex molecule looks like.

“To see this chemical “fingerprint”, however, you have to know what to look for. For Stimson, existing methods didn’t cut it: there was often too much interference in the resulting spectra to clearly see the stretches and bends she was seeking.

“Stimson solved this problem by mixing the chemical she was studying with potassium bromide and pressing it into a nearly transparent pellet. Potassium bromide, made up of a positively charged potassium ion and a negatively charged bromine ion, doesn’t have stretches and bends, so it doesn’t interfere with the spectrum. Of her new method, she said “there was an absence of interfering bands, lower scattering losses, higher resolution of spectra, better control of concentration and homogeneity of sample, ease in examining small samples, and possibility of storing of specimens for further studies.”

“Using potassium bromide opened up a new world for Stimson and other chemists to study both simple and complex structures, and led Stimson to her most consequential contribution: the discovery of the structure of DNA.

“Armed with her potassium bromide technique, Stimson was able to not only confirm the structure of DNA nucleotide bases, but also study how they were connected in the DNA double helix structure, literally turning the flawed models inside out.

“Unlocking DNA was arguably the most critical scientific issue of the time, mesmerizing the most famous minds in science like James Watson, Francis Crick, and Linus Pauling. Watson, Crick, and Pauling, however, all proposed models with a fundamental flaw: they were inside out. They had the bases on the outside, not the inside where they belong.

“Armed with her potassium bromide technique, Stimson was able to not only confirm the structure of DNA nucleotide bases, but also study how they were connected in the DNA double helix structure, literally turning the flawed models inside out.

“Stimson has not received much credit for her contribution to DNA; the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA went to Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins …. in 1962. She was, however, invited to lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris, the second woman ever following Marie Curie, and she received international recognition for her extensive work in spectroscopy. “ (1)

It is telling that Sister Miriam’s work was not recognised by the scientific community: perhaps that is an example of Chesterton’s description of the Catholic faith as one that is always a “nuisance and a new and dangerous thing.” Such a dangerous thing is always better left ignored. In true nun-way though, Sister Miriam Michael did not seem to be overly troubled by the silence of the scientific world (who’s really surprised?), the article stating that:

“She was also able to make an impact at her small home school in Michigan, where she was known as M2 (that’s M squared to you). In addition to running her cancer chemistry lab for more than 30 years, she founded an addiction counselling program and introduced undergraduate level research to the university.” (1)

An amusing impression garnered by a perusal of articles about Sister Miriam Michael is the media bewilderment at the image of a Dominican nun in full habit engaged in scientific discovery. This bewilderment is accompanied by the simultaneous (and generous) recognition of the beauty of the image; descriptions such as that of a photograph showing her “bent over her laboratory equipment, a bright light shining into her face, her habit and hood illuminated in the manner of a medieval painting.” (4)

The article by Laura Mast states that “Children as young as seven years old draw scientists as predominantly men (the lab coat and crazy hair are bonus). While this trend is changing, I’ll hazard a guess that not everyone might think of a Catholic nun when they think “scientist.” (1)

Strangely, as someone who attended a Catholic school taught by nuns, the picture of Sister Miriam at work is one that is achingly familiar – that is, those of us who were privileged to attend schools taught by these consecrated women who devoted their lives to the education of other people’s children, for no material reward, had role models who were, frequently, highly educated and intelligent women who, on reflection, it must be said, engaged with the world without the resentments that colour their more liberated descendants. In other words, I do not find it at all odd that a Catholic nun in full habit is a “scientist.”

Moreover, the pursuit of science as a true and genuine discovery of the creation of God, the earth, the heavens, is a legacy of the Catholic Church dating from the earliest times.

Indeed, Sister Miriam Michael was drawing upon a legacy of centuries of scientific doctrine developed by Catholic religious scientists; in fact, the very methods used by all scientists (if engaged in genuine scientific objective discovery and not ideology) are methods developed initially by Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253), Bishop of London and enlarged by Albertus Magnus (1200-1280), Bishop of Regensburg, who challenged students to “not merely accept classical scholarship but to challenge the received wisdom and seek reliable observations.” Bishop Grossetetse’s scientific method was further expanded by Roger Bacon, (1214-1294), a Franciscan, who “emphasised empiricism- that theories must be put to further tests of their implications and predictions before they can be regarded as valid.” (5)

The Venite Prandete post on Copernicus, (24th May), featured a quote by Rodney Starke, who observed:

“Just as a group of eighteenth century philosophers invented the notion of the Dark Ages to discredit Catholicism, they labelled their own era the Enlightenment on the grounds that religious darkness had been displaced by secular humanism;

’’Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Hume and others wrapped themselves in the achievements of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ as they celebrated the victory of secularism, eventuating in the Marquis Laplace’s claim that God was now an unnecessary hypothesis. Of course, not one of these ‘enlightened’ figures had played any part in the scientific enterprise. What about those who had? Were they a bunch of sceptics? Hardly. … Science arose in Catholic Europe because … medieval Europeans believed that science was possible and desirable. And the basis for their belief was their image of God and His Creation – a belief that was directly derived from medieval theology.” (6)

"Rene Descartes justified his search for the ‘laws of nature on the ground that such laws must exist because God is perfect and therefore ‘acts in a manner as constant and immutable as possible.’ That is, the universe functions according to rational rules or laws. Furthermore, because God has given humans the power to reason it should be possible for us to discover God’s laws, the rules established by God. “

Starke concluded: “Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the rise of science is that the early scientists not only searched for natural laws, confident that they existed, but that they found them.” (7).

In such a tradition, Sister Miriam Michael was a fulfilment of the intellectual traditions of Catholic thought. Laura Mast stated:

“While most sources don’t describe how Sister Miriam Michael Stimson thought about her work in the context of her religion, one article describes her saying, “Sister Miriam saw her scientific work as a means of discovering truth that would lead us closer to God.” Her former student and colleague, Sister Sharon Weber, said after Stimson’s death, “the spirit of the Dominican search for truth was a very high value of hers, that in coming to know truth we know more about God.” (1)

Science is our way of discovery of the world around us, of making sense of the forces surrounding our lives. The very existence of the discipline of science owes its origins to the joy of discovery of God’s creation, to the romance described by Chesterton, where we belong to a Creed which allows us to view the world with a combination of “an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome.”

(1) massivesci.com: Laura Mast, “Sister Miriam Michael Stimson turned early models of DNA inside out.”

(2) Vatican Observatory, part 15 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church.

(3) GK Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1926/1990, at p. 29; see Venite Prandete Post dated 14th June 2021 on GK Chesterton.

(4) Washington Post.com: the Violinists’ thumb and other lost tales of love and war.

(5) Rodney Starke, “Bearing False Witness,” Templeton Press, PA 2016, at p. 145; See Venite Prandete Post, dated 24th May on Nicolas Copernicus.

(6) Rodney Starke, opcit, at p. 153.

(7) Rodney Starke, opcit, at pp. 160-161.