George Coyne
George Vincent Coyne, S.J. (January 19, 1933 – February 11, 2020) was an American Jesuit priest and astronomer who directed the Vatican Observatory and headed its research group at the University of Arizona from 1978 to 2006. From January 2012 until his death, he taught at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. His career was dedicated to the reconciliation of theology and science, while his stance on scripture was absolute: "One thing the Bible is not," he said in 1994, "is a scientific textbook. Scripture is made up of myth, of poetry, of history. But it is simply not teaching science." Early years and education George Coyne was born in Baltimore on January 19, 1933, the third of eight siblings. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, after attending Loyola High School in Blakefield, Maryland, on scholarship and graduating in 1951. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics and his licentiate in philosophy at Fordham University in 1958. He carried out a spectrophotometric study of the lunar surface to obtain his doctorate in astronomy from Georgetown University in 1962. He spent the summer of 1963 doing research at Harvard University, the summer of 1964 as a National Science Foundation lecturer at the University of Scranton, and the summer of 1965 as visiting research professor at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (UA LPL). He obtained a licentiate in sacred theology at Woodstock College and was ordained a priest in 1966. Coyne was visiting assistant professor at the UA LPL in 1966-67 and 1968–69 and a visiting astronomer at the Vatican Observatory in 1967-68. Director of Vatican Observatory Coyne joined the Vatican Observatory as an astronomer in 1969 and became an assistant professor at the LPL in 1970. In 1976 he became a senior research fellow at the LPL and a lecturer in the UA Department of Astronomy. The following year he served as Director of the UA's Catalina Observatory and as Associate Director of the LPL. Pope John Paul I appointed him Director of the Vatican Observatory in 1978, and also Associate Director of the UA Steward Observatory. During 1979-80 he served as Acting Director and Head of the UA Steward Observatory and the Astronomy Department. He spent five months of the year in Tucson as adjunct professor in the University of Arizona Astronomy Department. As Director of the Vatican Observatory he was a driving force in several new educational and research initiatives. He recruited young astronomers worldwide and established a program for non-resident adjunct appointments that allowed women to participate. Women accounted for almost half the participants in the biennial Vatican Observatory Summer School he established for astronomy graduate students. In the 1990s he organized conferences at the Observatory's headquarters in Castel Gandolfo, including one titled "God's Action in the Universe" sponsored jointly with the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences of Berkeley, California. One of his successors said Coyne only asked his hires to do "good science" and that "He created a space