Ian Hutchinson

Ian Horner Hutchinson (7 June 1951) is a nuclear engineer and physicist who is currently Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has made a number of important contributions to the fields of nuclear engineering and nuclear physics and has also written about the philosophy of science and the relationship between religion and science.

Hutchinson received his B.A. in physics from Cambridge University in 1972. He then received his Ph.D in Engineering Physics from Australian National University in 1976, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. After receiving his Ph.D Hutchinson performed experimental research on one of the earliest tokamaks to be operated outside of the Soviet Union. He engaged in further research at MIT during its first major tokamak research initiative, before doing research for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He returned to MIT in 1983 as a faculty member in the Nuclear Engineering Department, and served as the Head of the Department of Nuclear Physics and Engineering from 2003 to 2009.Hutchinson has authored more than 160 journal articles on plasma phenomena and nuclear fusion. He was the 2008 Chairman of the Division of Plasma Physics group of the American Physical Society, of which he had been elected a fellow in 1988.He is author of the standard monograph on measuring plasmas, Principles of Plasma Diagnostics.

Can a scientist believe in the resurrection?'Three hypotheses'

"Science cannot and does not disprove the resurrection. Natural science describes the normal reproducible working of the world of nature. Indeed, the key meaning of 'nature', as Boyle emphasized, is 'the normal course of events.' Miracles like the resurrection do not fit in with the normal course of events. It does not take modern science to tell us that humans don't rise from the dead. People knew that perfectly well in the first century; just as they knew that the blind from birth don't as adults regain their sight, or water doesn't instantly turn into wine."

"Still, the fact that the resurrection was impossible in the normal course of events was as obvious in the first century as it is for us. Indeed that is why it was seen as a great demonstration of of God's power."
[John Lennox cites this passage on p121 and p124 of Cosmic Chemistry ]