Barbour, Ian

▪ 2000

      On May 11, 1999, American theologian and physicist Ian Barbour was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the world's largest annual monetary award—$1,240,000—for his “deep and lasting contribution toward the needed integration of scientific and religious knowledge and values.” The prize was established by Sir John Templeton in 1972 to honour individuals who display “extraordinary originality in advancing humankind's understanding of God and/or spirituality.” When the award was announced, Barbour promptly pledged $1 million of the prize money to the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, an educational organization affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif.

      Barbour was born on Oct. 5, 1923, in Beijing, where his Scottish father and American mother both taught at Yanjing University. His family settled in the U.S. when he was 14 years old. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics from Swarthmore (Pa.) College in 1943 and received his M.A. from Duke University, Durham, N.C., in 1946. After studying with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1949, he began teaching at Kalamazoo (Mich.) College, becoming chairman of the physics department in 1951.

      Despite his success as a physics professor, Barbour chose to move in a new direction in 1953, enrolling at Yale Divinity School to study theology and ethics. Even before completing his divinity degree in 1956, he was appointed to teach in both the religion and physics departments of Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., in 1955. Committed to exploring the relationship between science and religion, Barbour initiated an interdisciplinary program at Carleton in 1972 that promoted study in both fields. He became Carleton's first professor of science, technology, and society in 1981.

      Barbour wrote numerous books and articles on the interaction between science and religion. His Issues in Science and Religion, first published in 1966, was one of the first books to treat the fields as two disciplines that shared a common ground rather than as two completely separate or conflicting spheres of study. The publication, which many credited with having created the interdisciplinary field of science and religion, was widely used as a college textbook. Barbour's other notable works included Myths, Models, and Paradigms (1974), which compared concepts and methods of inquiry in science and religion and was nominated for a National Book Award. Religion in an Age of Science (1990) and Ethics in an Age of Technology (1993), a two-volume set based on a series of lectures he presented in Scotland, received the 1993 book award from the American Academy of Religion. Among the topics Barbour had examined were religion's role in the treatment and development of the environment, the impact of the theory of evolution and big bang cosmology on religious thought, and the influence of religion on ethical issues raised by rapid advances in such fields as medicine, genetic engineering, agriculture, and computer technology.

Amy R. Tao

* * *