On 6 February 1887, readers of the Istanbul newspapers came across a shocking story: Besir Fuad, former military officer, and frequent contributor to newspapers on subjects pertaining to modern science, had committed suicide. Moreover, Fuad had apparently attempted to serve science even with his suicide by taking notes about his sensations during the last moments of his life, and leaving a letter stating that he donated his body to the Medical Academy. Fuad’s death was represented in the press as an illustration of the harmful effects of materialist thought on Muslim Ottomans, and the consequences of straying away from religion and tradition. Not only was Fuad explicitly or implicitly referred to in many late Ottoman texts on science, religion, materialism, and morality, his story continues to be used to enliven accounts on the relations between science and religion in contemporary Turkey. Be it as a symbol of "misguided Westernization" or as a "martyr to science," Fuad's image plays an important role in Turkish narratives on science and religion. In this paper, I seek to describe and analyze the dimensions of this role. First, I illustrate how journalists, intellectuals and scholars constructed narratives about Besir Fuad in order to make alternative arguments about science, Islam, and morality. I argue that studying the various ways in which the myth of Fuad is constructed illustrates the political and social significance of the “science and religion” debate in Turkey. Second, I discuss how new sociological approaches to intellectual biographies and interventions insights can be used to understand both Besir Fuad, and the role of his image in the Turkish debate on science and religion.