The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities is a prize given out annually by the Templeton Foundation. Established in 1972, it is awarded to a living person who, in the estimation of the judges, best exemplifies "trying various ways for discoveries and breakthroughs to expand human perceptions of divinity and to help in the acceleration of divine creativity." The prize is named after Sir John Templeton, an American-born British entrepreneur and businessman, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his philanthropic efforts. Until 2001 the name of the prize was Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. It has typically been presented by Prince Philip in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. The monetary value of the prize (795,000 GBP or approx. 1.4 million US dollars in 2006) is adjusted so that it exceeds that of the Nobel Prizes. The prize is, as of 2006, the largest single annual financial prize award given to an individual for intellectual merit.
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Prize winners
- 1973 - Mother Teresa of Calcutta
- 1974 - Frère Roger, founder of the Taizé Community
- 1975 - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, President of India
- 1976 - Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens
- 1977 - Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement
- 1978 - Prof. Thomas Torrance
- 1979 - Rev. Nikkyo Niwano
- 1980 - Ralph Wendell Burhoe, founder of Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science
- 1981 - Cicely Saunders, hospice founder
- 1982 - Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, evangelist
- 1983 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident novelist
- 1984 - Rev. Michael Bourdeaux, founder of the Keston Institute
- 1985 - Alister Hardy, founder of the Religious Experience Research Centre
- 1986 - Rev. James I. McCord of the Princeton Theological Seminary
- 1987 - Stanley Jaki
- 1988 - Dr. Inamullah Khan
- 1989 - Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, physicist and philosopher, Lord MacLeod of Fuinary, founder of the Iona Community and Indarjit Singh
- 1990 - Baba Amte and L. Charles Birch
- 1991 - Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits
- 1992 - Kyung-Chik Han
- 1993 - Charles Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship
- 1994 - Michael Novak, philosopher and diplomat
- 1995 - Paul Davies, theoretical physicist
- 1996 - Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ
- 1997 - Pandurang Shastri Athavale
- 1998 - Sigmund Sternberg, philanthropist
- 1999 - Ian Barbour, professor
- 2000 - Freeman Dyson, physicist
- 2001 - Rev. Arthur Peacocke
- 2002 - Rev. John Polkinghorne
- 2003 - Holmes Rolston III, philosopher
- 2004 - George F. R. Ellis, cosmologist and philosopher
- 2005 - Charles Townes, Nobel laureate and physicist
- 2006 - John D. Barrow, cosmologist and theoretical physicist
- 2007 - Charles Taylor, philosopher
Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims have been on the panel of judges and have been recipients of the prize.
Criticism
The prize has been criticized by atheists such as Richard Dawkins, a British biologist, who labeled it "a very large sum of money given [...] usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion" (Dawkins 2006). The implication is that any professor prepared to have their palm thus greased is intellectually dishonest.[1] Dawkins is critical of the prize in his book The God Delusion. Sean M. Carroll, a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, also criticized the prize.[2]
