Institute of Advanced Studies

The Shroud of Turin: What science can tell us

by Joel Bernstein, Professor of Chemistry, NYU Abu Dhabi and Ben Gurion University of the Negev and 2011 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Professor-at-Large

Many of the historic Catholic cathedrals and churches in the old world (and some in the new world) can claim some relic associated with the life of Christ, a saint or a martyr that increases the loyalty of the faithful and their identity with that institution.

One of the most famous of those relics is the treasured Shroud of the Cathedral of Turin, a cloth with a human size Christ-like image. For centuries it was publicly displayed for a short period only every few decades, but more recently has been displayed with greater frequency. Moreover, in the 1970’s the authorities overseeing the Shroud established STURP, the Shroud of Turin Research Project, to examine and presumably to verify the source and history of the Shroud.

The late Dr. Walter McCrone, a prominent Chicago-based chemical microscopist, was invited to be a member of STURP. His STURP-sanctioned investigation examined a multitude of samples using his expertly honed microscopic techniques. The conclusions drawn from that examination about the source and date of the Shroud led to considerable controversy and his expulsion from the Project. 

This talk will examine the developments leading to McCrone’s investigations, the scientific basis and experimental aspects of McCrone’s study, the conclusions drawn from that study, and the absence or presence of confirming evidence for those conclusions. This has led to perhaps the quintessential conflict between acceptance of the validity and veracity of the scientific method on the one hand, and religious belief and faith on the other hand, and we will examine some of those issues as well.

About Joel Bernstein
Joel Bernstein gained his BA at Cornell University and earned his PhD degree in physical chemistry at Yale University for research on the solid-state spectroscopy of organic compounds. Following two-year postdoctoral stints in X-ray crystallography at UCLA and in organic solid-state chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovoth, Israel, he joined the faculty of the newly established Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where until January 2010 he was the incumbent of the Carol and Barry Kaye Professorship of Applied Science in the Department of Chemistry. In May 2010 he was appointed as a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi.

His research interests center on the organic solid state, with particular emphasis on understanding and utilizing polymorphism, structure-property relationships, hydrogen-bonding patterns and graph sets and organic conducting materials. He has published over 160 research and review articles on these subjects and is the author of Polymorphism in Molecular Crystals (Oxford University Press, 2002) and recently translated into Russian. In 1999 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has served as a consultant to a number of pharmaceutical companies and as a testifying witness in litigations on the solid-state chemistry of drugs. His career has been punctuated by visiting professorships at the University of Illinois, Cornell University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Barcelona, the University of Bologna and as a visiting scientist at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Joel is a 2011 Institute of Advanced Studies Professor-at-Large at The University of Western Australia.