Nassau, Bahamas - John Templeton, an investor and mutual fund pioneer who dedicated much of his fortune to promoting religion and reconciling it with science, has died. He was 95.
Templeton died Tuesday from pneumonia at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas, said his spokesman Donald Lehr.
Templeton created the $1.4 million Templeton Prize – billed as the world’s richest annual prize – to honor advancement in spiritual matters. Winners have included Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Templeton wanted the monetary value to surpass that of the Nobel Prize to show that advances in spiritual fields were just as important, Lehr said in a statement. Next year’s prize is expected to be almost $2 million, he said.
Templeton was born in Tennessee, graduated from Yale University and became a Rhodes scholar, earning a master’s degree in law at Oxford University. He later moved to Nassau and became a naturalized British citizen.