Sir John M. Templeton

Sir John M. Templeton, trustee emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, of Nassau, the Bahamas, died Tuesday, July 8, 2008, from pneumonia at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, at age 95.

Templeton joined the Seminary’s Board of Trustees in 1951 and served until 1988. He served two terms as chair and had an incalculable impact upon the growth of the Seminary’s endowment.

Born November 29, 1912 in Winchester, Tennessee, Templeton graduated from Yale University in 1934 and was named a Rhodes Scholar to Balliol College at the University of Oxford, from which he graduated with an M.A. degree in law.

A pioneer in both financial investments and philanthropy, Templeton started his Wall Street career in 1937 and went on to create some of the world’s largest and most successful international investment funds.

During a career that included directorships on banks, businesses, and insurance companies, Templeton maintained a long association with the Presbyterian Church (USA), and also lent his business acumen to the Presbyterians’ ministerial pension fund for more than three decades until 1993.

He established the £1,000,000 Templeton Prize in 1972, the largest annual award given to an individual in recognition of exemplary achievement in work related to life’s spiritual dimension. This prize grew out of his belief that an honor equivalent to a Nobel Prize should be bestowed on living innovators in spiritual action and thought.

In 1987 he established the John Templeton Foundation, with a sizeable contribution from his fortune. Today with an endowment of $1.5 billion, the Foundation gives out $70 million in annual grants and administers the Templeton Prize. Its mission is to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for research on what scientists and philosophers call the “Big Questions.” This is derived from Templeton’s belief that rigorous research and cutting-edge science are at the heart of human progress.

He is preceded in death by his first wife, Judith Folk, who died in 1951, and his second wife, Irene Reynolds Butler, who passed away in 1993 after thirty-five years of marriage. Templeton is survived by his son John M. Templeton Jr., a retired pediatric surgeon who is currently president of the John Templeton Foundation, his son Christopher, stepdaughter Wendy Brooks, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His daughter, Anne Templeton Zimmerman, died in 2004 and his stepson, Malcolm Butler, died in 1995.

For more information about the life of Sir John Templeton, visit http://www.templeton.org/.