By LUIS ANDRES HENAO, Related Press
Frank Wilczek, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist and writer famend for his boundary-pushing investigations into the basic legal guidelines of nature, was honored Wednesday with this 12 months’s prestigious Templeton Prize, awarded to people whose life’s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.
In an announcement, the John Templeton Basis praised the 70-year-old Wilczek for reworking “our understanding of the forces that govern our universe,” whereas additionally making use of “the insights of his subject to the good questions of that means and objective contemplated by generations of spiritual thinkers.”
Established in 1972 by the late philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the prize is without doubt one of the world’s most profitable particular person awards, presently greater than $1.3 million. Previous winners embody Jane Goodall, Mom Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
“It’s an organization I’m very glad to hitch,” Wilczek informed The Related Press in an interview forward of the announcement.
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“It’s encouragement in a path that I’ve actually solely taken up in a giant approach fairly just lately, though I’ve been constructing as much as it for a few years,” he stated, “which is considering not simply what the world is and the way it got here to be this fashion however what we should always do about it.”
Over an extended profession, Wilczek has recorded many distinguished achievements. That features the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, together with David J. Gross, and H. David Politzer, for his or her 1973 breakthrough explaining the bizarre properties of the sturdy drive, which binds basic particles referred to as quarks into protons and neutrons.
Wilczek has continued “to pioneer new ideas in physics, naming and growing the theories of anyons, time crystals, and axions, every of which now defines main fields of inquiry,” the Templeton assertion stated.
He has additionally authored a number of books which can be knowledgeable by science however delve into the non secular and philosophical. They embody “ A Stunning Query,” during which he asks, “Does the universe embody stunning concepts?”; “ The Lightness of Being,” an examination of what people are made from; and “ Fundamentals,” an exploration of radical life extension, the eager for immortality, the bounds of science and different matters.
“In learning how the world works, we’re learning how God works, and thereby studying what God is,” he writes in “Fundamentals,” launched this 12 months. “In that spirit, we will interpret the seek for data as a type of worship, and our discoveries as revelations.”
Wilczek “is a kind of uncommon and great people who carry collectively a eager, inventive mind and an appreciation for transcendent magnificence,” Templeton Basis president Heather Dill stated within the group’s assertion.
“Like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein,” she added, “he’s a pure thinker who unites a curiosity concerning the conduct of nature with a playful and profound philosophical thoughts.”
Born in 1951 in New York, Wilczek earned a bachelor’s diploma in arithmetic from the College of Chicago and an an M.A. in math and a Ph.D in physics from Princeton.
Rising up Catholic, he embraced the concept that there was a grand plan behind existence. However as he realized extra about science, he ultimately misplaced religion in standard faith and, in his phrases, “jettisoned detailed dogmas.”
Nonetheless, he took from Catholicism lasting concepts that he has treasured all through his life, together with, he informed AP, “that there’s a hidden that means to issues that we will strive to determine. And you could assume large by way of what all of it means and the way it got here to be.”
Wilczek presently is a physics professor on the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, Arizona State College and Stockholm College. He’s additionally founding director of Shanghai Jiao Tong College’s T.D. Lee Institute and chief scientist on the faculty’s Wilczek Quantum Middle.
In a video assertion, he lauded the Templeton Prize for bringing consideration to potential new approaches to issues historically accessed via faith.
“The central miracle of physics to me is the truth that by enjoying with equations, drawing diagrams, doing calculations and dealing inside the world of psychological ideas and manipulations, you’re really describing the true world,” Wilczek stated. “For those who had been in search of attempting to grasp what God is by understanding God’s work, that’s it.”
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