section_path: Culture/Science
section_name: Science
paragraph_text: Science
  
  Following in the footsteps of the Pontifical Academy of New Lincei founded by Pope Pius IX in 1847, Pope Pius XI founded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936, which, located in the Casina Pio IV, guarantees academic freedom to contribute to mathematical, physical (including astronomy, Earth sciences, physics and chemistry) and natural sciences (e.g., medicine, neuroscience, biology, genetics, biochemistry), and confront epistemological issues, with interests also in the history of science. Among the academicians, there are or were the astrophysicist Martin John Rees, the mathematician Cédric Villani, the theoretical physicist Edward Witten, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureates Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, and Ernest Rutherford, the geneticists Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Francis Collins, the head transplant pioneer Robert J. White, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Alexander Fleming.
  
  The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences is another pontifical academy of the Holy See located in the Vatican City, which deals with anthropology, communication studies, information sciences, cybernetics, economics, education, geography, history, law, linguistics, political science, psychology, behavioral sciences, sociology and demography. The seat of the Pontifical Academy for Life, whose domains are bioethics and ethics of technology, is at San Callisto complex, a Vatican extraterritorial property.
  
  The Vatican Observatory, whose origins date back to the 16th century, continues to contribute to astronomical research, especially through a partnership with the University of Arizona and the infrared and optical Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in Arizona, and to astronomical education and " popular science " projects. As a member of the International Astronomical Union and the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, it deals with research on cosmological models, stellar classification, binary stars, and nebulae. It has contributed to philosophical interdisciplinary studies at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California and research on the history of astronomy thanks to its extensive library, which includes a meteorite collection.
  
  Some of the Vatican telescopes of the astronomical institution named Vatican Observatory participated in creating the Carte du Ciel, but they have progressively become useless or limited for research purposes due to light pollution in their locations: Vatican City (the Gardens of Vatican City and near St. Peter's Basilica) and the Vatican extraterritorial Palace of Castel Gandolfo.