Prohibiting What? Censorship and the Catholic Church in the Scientific Revolution - Dr. Nuno Castel-Branco

Challenging popular narratives of the Scientific Revolution and Catholic suppression, Dr. Nuno Castel-Branco demonstrates that early modern censorship focused on theology while allowing the scientific discoveries of figures like Steno and Galileo to flourish.

This lecture was given on September 23rd, 2026, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events

About the Speaker:

Nuno Castel-Branco is a Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He completed his Ph.D. in the history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University in 2021 after earning a Bachelors and Masters in Physics at the University of Lisbon. After his PhD, he was a Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti in Florence and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He often speaks about the history of science to broad audiences in the United States and Europe. His first book, The Traveling Anatomist: Nicolaus Steno and the Intersection of Disciplines in Early Modern Science was published by the University of Chicago Press in October 2025. His writing has also appeared in places like the Wall Street Journal, Physics Today, and Scientific American, as well as in research journals such as “Notes and Records of the Royal Society,” and “Isis”.

Keywords: Scientific Revolution, Catholic Church, Censorship, Galileo Affair, Gelileo Galilei, Galileo, Nicolas Steno, History Of Science, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Copernicanism