John M. Templeton, a Tennessee-born investor and philanthropist who amassed a fortune as a pioneer in global mutual funds, then gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to foster understanding of what he called “spiritual realities,” died on Tuesday in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he had lived for decades. He was 95.
His death, at Doctors Hospital, was caused by pneumonia, said Donald Lehr, a spokesman for the John Templeton Foundation.
The foundation awards the Templeton Prize, one of the world’s richest, and sponsors conferences and studies reflecting the founder’s passionate interest in “progress in religion” and “research or discoveries” on the nebulous borders of science and religion.
In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Templeton dazzled Wall Street, organized some of the most successful mutual funds of his time, led investors into foreign markets, established charities that now give away $70 million a year, wrote books on finance and spirituality and promoted a search for answers to what he called the “Big Questions” in the realms of science, faith, God and the purpose of humanity.
John Templeton was a remarkable, talented, and unusual figure. I had the opportunity to meet him a couple of times twenty years or so ago. While his theology left something to be desired, and there were certain eccentricities in his personality, his generosity has been an example to many.
He funded, among other things, the Metanexus Institute, which seems to be working to find some sort of marriage between religion and science, usually with science having the upper hand in events I have been to. The notion that science can answer the great questions of religion (or be used as a wedge against some forms of religion) seems to have its popular adherants.