Charles Hard Townes is this year’s winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities. The prize comes with $1.5 million—an amount that purposely exceeds the Nobel Prize purse. He joins Mother Teresa and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as recipients of both the Templeton and Nobel Prizes.
In 1964, Townes shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electronics, which led to the invention of masers and lasers. That same year, a talk he gave at Riverside Church in New York City launched a parallel, informal career as an advocate for the convergence of science and religion.
“Early in the game, I was willing to speak up about the interactions between science and religion, and what they could learn from each other,” says Townes. “Science tries to understand how the universe works. Religion tries to understand the purpose. Is there a purpose? What...
