Peter Harrison is a former professor of science and religion at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, and an expert on the dialogue and tensions between science and religion. He is the author of The Territories of Science and Religion. He is now director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at […]

Mary Doria Russell is a novelist whose 1997 book The Sparrow is about first contact with intelligent aliens and the Jesuit priest who is part of an expedition to their planet. The book and its sequel, Children of God, deals with how the contact changes theology. She lives near Cleveland.

Michael Waltemathe is the chair of practical theology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Bochum, Germany. Much of his research focuses on a “religious vision” of space travel and exploration.

The Rev. Michael Heller is a Catholic priest, philosopher and cosmologist at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. He has written numerous books and articles — mostly in Polish — about the nature of the universe, its origins and something he calls a “theology of science.” He received the 2008 Templeton […]

The Rev. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti is an Opus Dei priest and a professor of fundamental theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He previously was an astronomer and researcher at the Observatory of Turin in Turin, Italy. He is editor of The Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, where he tackled the […]

The Rev. David Wilkinson is a professor of theology and religion at Durham University in Durham, England. He is also an ordained Methodist minister with a doctorate in the study of star formation and the evolution of galaxies. He is the author of Science, Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The Rev. Paul Gabor is a Catholic priest and vice director for the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, Ariz. He is a frequent contributor to the Vatican Observatory’s blog. Contact via Katie Bannan Steinke, development coordinator for VORG.

The Rev. James Kurzynski is a Catholic priest in the Diocese of LaCrosse, Wis., and a hobby astronomer. He writes frequently for the Vatican Observatory blog.

Brother Guy Consolmagno is a Jesuit and director of the the Vatican Observatory, as well as president of its foundation. He is a frequent commentator on religion and science and wrote the pamphlet “Intelligent Life in the Universe: Catholic belief and the search for extraterrestrial life.” The observatory is in Tucson, Ariz.