Templeton Prize

Templeton Prize
Templeton Prize
	Bernard d'Espagnat receiving the Templeton Prize from the Duke of Edinburgh in 2009
Awarded for	Outstanding contributions in affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works
Country	United States
Presented by	Templeton Foundation
Reward(s)	£1.1 million (2019)
First awarded	1973
Currently held by	Edna Adan Ismail
Website	templetonprize.org

The Templeton Prize is an annual award granted to a living person, in the estimation of the judges, "whose exemplary achievements advance Sir John Templeton's philanthropic vision: harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind's place and purpose within it." It was established, funded and administered by John Templeton starting in 1972. It is now co-funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and Templeton World Charity Foundation, and administered by the John Templeton Foundation.^[1]

The prize was originally awarded to people working in the field of religion (Mother Teresa was the first winner), but in the 1980s the scope broadened to include people working at the intersection of science and religion.^[2] Until 2001, the name of the prize was "Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion", and from 2002 to 2008 it was called the "Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities".^[3]^[4] Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims have been on the panel of judges and have been recipients of the prize.^[5]

The monetary value of the prize is adjusted so that it exceeds that of the Nobel Prizes; Templeton felt, according to The Economist, that "spirituality was ignored" in the Nobel Prizes.^[6] As of 2019^[update], it is £1.1 million.^[7] It has typically been presented by Prince Philip in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.^[8]^{[needs update]}

The prize has been referred to as prestigious^[9] and coveted,^[10] with The Washington Post calling it the most prestigious award in religion.^[11] Atheist scientists Richard Dawkins,^[12] Harry Kroto^[13] and Jerry Coyne have criticized the prize as "blurring [religion's] well-demarcated border with science" and being awarded "to scientists who are either religious themselves or say nice things about religion",^[14] a criticism rejected by 2011 laureate Martin Rees, who pointed to his own and other laureates' atheism and that their research in fields such as psychology, evolutionary biology, and economy can hardly be classified as the "promotion of religion".^[14]

Laureates

Year	Laureate		Notes	Ref(s)
1973		Mother Teresa	Founder of the Missionaries of Charity; 1979 Nobel Peace Prize laureate	^[15]
1974		Frère Roger	Founder of the Taizé Community	^[16]
1975		Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan	Former President of India, advocate of non-aggression with Pakistan	^[16]
1976		Leo Joseph Suenens	Pioneer in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement	^[17]
1977		Chiara Lubich	Founder of the Focolare Movement	^[18]
1978	—	Thomas F. Torrance	Former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland	^[17]
1979		Nikkyō Niwano	Co-founder of the Risshō Kōsei Kai	^[17]
1980	—	Ralph Wendell Burhoe	Founder of the journal Zygon	^[19]
1981		Cicely Saunders	Founder of the hospice and palliative care movement	^[20]
1982		Billy Graham	Evangelist	^[21]
1983		Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	Soviet dissident novelist; Nobel laureate	^[21]
1984	—	Michael Bourdeaux	Founder of the Keston Institute	^[16]
1985	—	Sir Alister Hardy	Founder of the Religious Experience Research Centre	^[22]
1986	—	James I. McCord	Former president, Princeton Theological Seminary	^[23]
1987		Stanley Jaki	Benedictine priest; professor of astrophysics, Seton Hall University	^[21]
1988	—	Inamullah Khan	Former secretary-general, Modern World Muslim Congress	^[24]
1989		Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker^[a]	Physicist and philosopher	^[17]
1989	—	George MacLeod^[a]	Founder of the Iona Community	^[26]
1990		Baba Amte^[b]	Developer of modern communities for people suffering from leprosy	^[27]
1990	—	Charles Birch^[b]	Emeritus professor, University of Sydney	^[28]
1991		Immanuel Jakobovits, Baron Jakobovits	Former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth	^[17]
1992		Kyung-Chik Han	Evangelist and founder of Youngnak Presbyterian Church, Seoul. From northern Korea.	^[29]
1993		Charles Colson	Founder of the Prison Fellowship	^[16]
1994		Michael Novak	Philosopher and diplomat	^[16]
1995		Paul Davies	Theoretical physicist	^[30]
1996		Bill Bright	Founder of the Campus Crusade for Christ	^[31]
1997	—	Pandurang Shastri Athavale	Social reformer and philosopher, founder of the Swadhyay Movement	^[31]
1998	—	Sir Sigmund Sternberg	Philanthropist; founder of the Three Faith Forum	^[16]
1999	—	Ian Barbour	Former professor of science, technology and society, Carleton College	^[32]
2000		Freeman Dyson	Theoretical and mathematical physicist, mathematician, and statistician	^[32]
2001	—	Arthur Peacocke	Former dean, Clare College, Cambridge	^[33]
2002		John Polkinghorne	Physicist and theologian	^[16]
2003		Holmes Rolston III	Philosopher	^[34]
2004		George F. R. Ellis	Cosmologist and philosopher	^[35]
2005		Charles Hard Townes	Nobel laureate and physicist	^[15]
2006		John D. Barrow	Cosmologist and theoretical physicist	^[36]
2007		Charles Taylor	Philosopher	^[12]
2008		Michał Heller	Physicist and philosopher	^[37]
2009		Bernard d'Espagnat	Physicist	^[38]
2010		Francisco J. Ayala	Biologist	^[39]
2011		Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow	Cosmologist and astrophysicist	^[40]
2012		14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso	Spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate	^[41]
2013		Desmond Tutu	Nobel laureate, social rights activist and retired Anglican archbishop	^[42]
2014		Tomáš Halík	Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher	^[43]
2015		Jean Vanier	Catholic theologian, humanitarian and founder of L'Arche and Faith and Light	^[44]
2016		Jonathan Sacks	Former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, philosopher, and scholar of Judaism	^[45]
2017		Alvin Plantinga	American scholar, philosopher, and writer	^[46]
2018		Abdullah II of Jordan	King of Jordan	^[47]
2019		Marcelo Gleiser	Brazilian physicist and astronomer, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College	^[48]^[49]
2020		Francis Collins	Geneticist and physician	^[50]
2021		Jane Goodall	Ethologist, activist and renowned chimpanzee researcher	^[51]
2022		Frank Wilczek	Theoretical physicist	^[52]
2023		Edna Adan Ismail	Health-care advocate	^[53]