Minister's son

The minister's son is relatively rare in numbers (less than one in many tens of thousands), yet extraordinarily productive in accomplishment.

Some examples of minister's sons are:

• Niels Abel, one of the greatest mathematicians, son of a Norwegian pastor.
• Samuel Adams, son of the deacon Puritan deacon Samuel Adams, Sr.
• Alex Briley, chart-topping singer: a minister's son who learned to sing in church from an early age.
• Hugh Dennis, comedian and former agent for the Security Service, son of the bishop of St Edmundsbury
• William O. Douglas, longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court Justice and former chairman of the SEC
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most famous American thinker and man of letters in the 19th century
• Leonhard Euler, the most prolific mathematician ever, son of a Calvinist pastor.
• Anthony Flew
• James Gamble, co-founder of Procter & Gamble
• Christian Goldbach, of Goldbach's conjecture in mathematics, was the son of a pastor in Prussia.
• Chester Gould, creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip
• Sir Nigel Gresley, one of the greatest steam locomotive designers
• William Hamilton, Irish mathematician and biggest contributor of mathematics to physics since Isaac Newton, raised by his uncle the Reverend James Hamilton.
• Thomas Hobbes, author of the greatest work of political philosophy, Leviathan (1651).
• Samuel Morse, son of a Congregationalist minister who advocated Calvinism.
• Isaac Newton, physicist, stepson of Anglican minister.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, son of a Lutheran pastor
• Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, son of a Congregational minister.
• Sir Laurence Olivier (Lord Olivier), classical actor.
• Paul, son of a Pharisee
• J.C. Penney
• Bernhard Riemann, mathematician, son of a Lutheran pastor.
• Anthony Sadler, an American hero who risked his life to stop a heavily armed terrorist on a train to Paris on August 21, 2015, which saved many lives.
• Boris Spassky, chess world champion (1969-1972) who is descended from the notable Russian Orthodox priest Vladimir Alexandrovich Spassky
• Kenneth Starr, prominent conservative judge, advocate, and Pepperdine law school dean.
• Nicola Tesla
• Justin Timberlake, singer and actor
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin who obtained national attention for standing up to the government workers' unions.
• President Woodrow Wilson
• Tim Westwood, well-known music journalist and motoring correspondent; son of the bishop of Peterborough.
• Ted Williams, son of an evangelical mother active in her church.
• Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps the greatest architect ever.
• The Wright Brothers

Achievement is even higher among children of missionaries. According to the organization Campus Crusade for Christ:.

“

In a study listed in Who's Who, it took 5,000 Presbyterian ministers to produce one child listed in Who's Who. Among lawyers the ratio was 5,000 to 1; dentists 2,500 to 1. But for every seven Christian missionary families from the United States, one of their children would be listed in Who's Who.

”

Minister's grandson

• Thomas Edison, the greatest inventor ever.

Additional examples

• Gordon Brown, Labour Party Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, son of a Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) minister.
• Captain William Kidd, pirate, hanged 1701, was the son of a Greenock minister.

See also

• Second generation atheist