Templeton Prize Winner Announced Today
by Lynn Garrett, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2008
Michael Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest, was named the winner of the 2008 Templeton Prize at a press conference this morning (Mar. 12) at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York City. The prize—endowed by global investor and philanthropist John Templeton to recognize contributions on the intersection of science and religion as well as explorations of "life's biggest questions…on love, gratitude, forgiveness and creativity"--comes with a cash award of $1.6 million, making it the world's largest monetary award to an individual.
Heller, 72, is professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow. His work has ranged over the fields of physics, cosmology, theology and philosophy, examining questions like, "Does the universe need to have a cause?" and "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Heller is the author of 30 books, five of them currently available in English, including The New Physics and a New Theology (Vatican Observatory Publications, 1996) and Creative Tension: Essays on Science and Religion (Templeton Foundation Press, 2003). This July, Springer Verlag will publish in English A Comprehensible Universe: The Interplay of Science and Theology (coauthored with George Coyne).
Under the Soviet rule of Poland in the 1960s, Heller worked with John Paul II, then Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Cracow, in establishing the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, a group of scientists, theologians and philosophers that became part of the Pontifical Academy of Theology in 1981.
In his statement at the press conference, Heller compared himself to Leibnitz, calling the German mathematician and philosopher "a master in spreading, not to say dissipating, his genius into too many fields of interest….I am also too ambitious. I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge and religion gives us meaning."
Heller plans to use the Templeton Prize money to further research and education in science and theology as an academic discipline by partnering with Jagiellonian University and the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow to establish the Copernicus Center.
The 2008 Templeton Prize will be officially presented to Heller by Prince Philip at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on May 7th.
