Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities

The Templeton Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation's international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life's biggest questions. Officially known as the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities, it is the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual, currently valued at 800,000 pounds sterling (more than $1.5 million). The Prize was created by global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton and first awarded in 1973.

"By honoring those whose research and discoveries have opened new perspectives and insights into such spiritual realities as purpose, love, and thanksgiving, the Prize fosters an environment that encourages others to help us more fully understand ourselves and our universe," says John M. Templeton, Jr.

The Prize Laureate is announced annually at a press conference at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York City in the second week of March and the award is presented in early May by The Duke of Edinburgh at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Although the Templeton Prize Laureate may or may not be associated with a particular religion, the international, interfaith panel of nine judges that awards the Prize does so without regard to religious affiliation.

The 2007 Templeton Prize Laureate, Charles Taylor, joins a distinguished list of 36 former recipients including Cambridge University cosmologist John D. Barrow, physicist Charles H. Townes, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 for his co-invention of the laser, and theoretical cosmologist George F.R. Ellis of the University of Cape Town, who advocates balancing the rationality of evidence-based science with the causal effect of forces beyond the explanation of hard science, including issues such as aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and meaning.