c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Charles Townes, a Nobel laureate who helped invent the laser and was an early pioneer in merging science and religion, has won the 2005 Templeton Prize and the more than $1.5 million that comes with it.

“Charles Townes helped to create and sustain the dialogue between science and theology,” David Shi, the president of Furman University, Townes’ undergraduate alma mater, said in nominating Townes for the honor.

The prize, which carries a cash award of 795,000 British pounds _ more than $1.5 million _ was announced Wednesday (March 9) at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York. In a prepared statement, Townes, a University of California, Berkeley physics professor, said, “Science and religion have had a long history of interesting interaction. But when I was younger, that interaction did not seem like a very healthy one.”

A South Carolina native who grew up as a progressive Baptist, the 89-year-old Townes said he would accept the award _ the full title of which is the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities _ with humility. He described himself as a “minor figure” in an area that has grown increasingly prominent in recent years.

Others would disagree. For decades he has been among the most fervent advocates for dialogue between scientists and theologians.

Townes has done so from a position of major renown in 20th century science, having won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics. His work studying the properties of microwaves had two practical results: the development of the maser, a device that amplifies electromagnetic waves, and later the laser, which amplifies and directs light waves into parallel direct beams.

That work resulted in the now-common use of lasers in the fields of medicine, telecommunications, electronics and computer science. His current research includes optical searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In 1964, while a professor at Columbia University in New York City, Townes delivered a talk at the city’s Riverside Church that became the basis for a groundbreaking and seminal article, “The Convergence of Science and Religion,” which appeared in an IBM journal.

In the article, Townes said it was time for the seemingly irreconcilable fields of science and religion to find common ground, noting “their differences are largely superficial, and … the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each.”

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology magazine eventually published the article, too _ prompting one alumnus to declare that “he would never have anything more to do with MIT” if an article on religion appeared again, Townes said in his prepared remarks for Wednesday.

That, Townes said, “reflected a common view at the time among many scientists that one could not be a scientist and religiously oriented. There was an antipathy towards discussion of spirituality.”

But that was never his experience.

Townes said a sudden insight that led to the discovery of the maser _ something that occurred on a Washington, D.C., park bench in 1951, he recalled _ was akin to a religious revelation, and it is that kind of recognition of mystery at play that unites the two fields.

“Science and religion have so many similarities,” Townes said in an interview prior to the award’s announcement.

He said he regrets that there are still scientists who are as “rigidly fundamentalist” as some religionists. Scientists, he said, must be mindful that “no scientific results are fully provable _ they are based on reasonable assumptions, and we have to recognize that.”

That is a theme Townes addressed in his prepared remarks, noting that “science basically involves assumptions and faith.”

“We must make the best assumptions we can envisage, and have faith. And wonderful things in both science and religion come from our efforts based on observations, thoughtful assumptions, faith and logic,” he said.

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The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities was founded in 1972 by Sir John Templeton, the global investor and philanthropist. In its early years, the prize was awarded to such well-known religious figures as Mother Teresa, the first winner in 1973, and the American evangelist Billy Graham. But in recent years, the prize has tended to honor scientists, mathematicians, theologians and ethicists engaged in the study and interpretation of science and religion.

Townes thanked Sir John Templeton for what he called “a creative and constructive emphasis on better understanding of religion” that has “made a major change” in the discussion of scientists and the public.

The Duke of Edinburgh will award the Templeton Prize to Townes on May 4 at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London. One of the stipulations of the prize is that it must be worth more than the money given for the Nobel Prizes.

Townes said he will donate a major portion of his prize money to Furman in Greenville, S.C., and four institutions in Berkeley, Calif.: the Pacific School of Religion, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Berkeley Ecumenical Chaplaincy to the Homeless and First Congregational Church.

MO/PH END RNS