I think he meant today. Aren't like >90% of scientists in the hard sciences atheists or at least non-religious? Of course there are thousands of counterexamples, but by "hard to find" I think he meant if you went down to the local uni you might not find anyone at all.

Be careful using those lists to show that people on them are "religious"; the articles' notes themselves quote laureate Orhan Pamuk (on the list of Muslim laureates) as saying "I do not believe in a personal connection to God" and James Gleick as saying that laureate Richard Feynman (on the list of Jewish laureates) was "distinctly uninterested in either the faith or sociology of Judaism".

You can also follow random Wikipedia article links and find, for example, laureate Joseph Rotblat saying "I am not a particularly religious person, and this is the reason for my agnosticism".