- Update - 7/18/08 - Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson of Grove City College surveys the principles that guided Templeton's personal life and career.
-What a remarkable man. He used his money to pursue research in the interface of science and religion. Click
here for a good overview of the man and his life. The Family Research Council published the following:
The adage says that an institution is the lengthening shadow of a man, but in the case of John Templeton, who died yesterday at the age of 95, the lengthening shadow is the answer his life gave to the biggest of questions. As the founder of the Templeton Prize, he combined his lifetime of financial acumen and personal generosity in an effort to ensure that accomplishments in advancing spiritual knowledge would receive the kind of worldwide recognition accorded to advances in medicine, science, peacemaking and other arts through such vehicles as the Nobel Prize. More specifically, he devoted energy and
resources to demonstrating that religion and science are not at odds, that insight into the created order and a yearning for the Creator could be reconciled in the modern world. His prize, now widely considered the largest in the world, has been bestowed on such figures as Dr. Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhentisyn, and Chuck Colson. Before the award that bears his name, however, came a long and meritorious career on Wall Street, where Templeton turned his business acumen and willingness to invest in struggling enterprises into the wealth that fueled his tremendous philanthropy. By all accounts, this success did not change him, but only enabled him to demonstrate ever more widely the interest in ideas and in the good of people that became the hallmarks of his near century among us. We offer our deepest condolences to his family on his passing.