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NOVA Wonders
A storied series provides a cutting-edge take on a set of age-old questions Across the globe and across history, people have looked up at the night sky and wondered about what they were seeing, and what remains hidden, in the heavens. With the help of modern science, we now know an incredible amount about what the universe contains, but have an equally potent awareness of just how much we don’t know. Fundamental questions — “What is the universe made of?” or “Are we alone?” — remain to be answered. Those two questions are part of a series of six compelling…
Beyond the First Glimpse: Extending Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative
New funding for groundbreaking collaboration to continue investigating some of the biggest questions in physics and cosmology On April 10, 2019 researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope, a global scientific project headquartered at Harvard University’s Black Hole Initiative (BHI), released the first-ever image of a black hole, from the center of Messier 87 (M87), a massive galaxy in the Virgo star cluster. News outlets around the world featured picture, a fuzzy orange ring of light bending around a black circle — the black hole’s event horizon inside of which matter, light, and information cannot escape. The announcement came as a…
John Templeton Foundation Receives 2,058 OFIs for 2019 Funding Cycle
The John Templeton Foundation closed its 2019 Online Funding Inquiry (OFI) application window on August 16, 2019. The Foundation received 2,058 OFIs totaling over $1 billion in requests from 94 countries, with an average request amount of $490,000. After careful review, 8.4% of the OFIs received will be invited to submit Full Proposals. “Thanks to everyone who submitted inquiries this year to the John Templeton Foundation,” said Kimon Sargeant, Vice President of Programs. "We are pleased to see so much interest in our mission and priorities. To honor that interest, the Foundation staff places great importance on reviewing every request…
Report Shows Key Role for Communication at Science Philanthropies
In a time marked by scientific discovery and technological advancement, a new report identifies a promising area for greater investment by science philanthropies: communication. The report, Identifying Best Practices for Communications Workforce at Science Philanthropies, was developed through a collaboration by the Rita Allen, Albert and Mary Lasker, and John Templeton Foundations to identify challenges and opportunities in science philanthropy communications. Philanthropy’s contributions are critical to advancing scientific research, providing essential support for new ideas and major initiatives. However, the report finds, science philanthropies can amplify their impact considerably by investing more purposefully in communications as a central part of…
WATCH: The Greatest Threats to American Democracy | Ford Foundation President Darren Walker
What is the single biggest challenge to democracy in the United States in the 21st century? Ford Foundation president Darren Walker sat down with us recently to discuss this question, which led his organization to focus its philanthropic giving on efforts to battle inequality. Learn more about his transformative vision for the Ford Foundation, and the role that philanthropy can play in resolving deep social challenges, in this energetic dialogue with John Templeton Foundation president Heather Templeton Dill. 'Hope Is the Oxygen of Society' The Ford Foundation's mandate to promote democracy, and the desire to maximize the impact of its…
Act Like a Holy Man
A new film will celebrate the lives, friendship and insights of two of our time’s most revered spiritual leaders: Desmond Tutu and the 14th Dalai Lama In April of 2015, Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, flew to Dharamsala, India to spend five days with his friend (and fellow Templeton Prize laureate) Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Their recorded conversations — more than 23 hours worth — became the basis for the 2016 New York Times bestseller The Book of Joy, co-authored with Douglas Abrams. Now, Abrams, activist and film producer Peggy Callahan and Academy Award-winning…
The Honesty Project
A new three-year project to investigate the science and philosophy of an understudied virtue. Until the last few years, most academic studies touching on the nature of honesty were actually focused on variations of its opposite: on lying, cheating, or deception. Recent studies have shifted the focus to the virtue of honesty, but have yet to capture robustly what honesty is, how common it is, and how it develops and functions in relationships, groups, organizations and institutions. A new three-year project, funded with $4.4 million from the John Templeton Foundation, aims to significantly advance the science and philosophy of honesty.…
Self-Sabotage Is Undermining Your Future. Here’s How to Conquer It.
Humans aren’t alone in our ability to imagine the future and predict likely outcomes. Research shows that animals from ravens to orangutans plan ahead by setting aside tools for later use. Still, our capacity for future-mindedness extends far beyond that of other species. We can dream about many scenarios that haven’t yet happened—for good or ill. (Seneca: "We suffer more from imagination than from reality.") We can constantly update our predictions of our personal future based on what we observe in the world around us. How we think about the future has significant implications for our decision making, and which…
A Night for the Ages
The writer and physician Oliver Sacks once described 2019 Templeton Prize laureate Marcelo Gleiser as having “a spaciousness of mind large enough to embrace both primordial creation myths and the latest advances in contemporary astronomy and cosmology.” It would thus be difficult to think of a more fitting venue than the one where Gleiser received his prize on May 29 in the Egyptian Wing of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hundreds of attendees braved a heavy spring rainstorm to ascend the Met’s front steps and file past the colossal, nearly 4,000-year-old statue of a seated Middle Kingdom pharaoh, past…
Getting to the Right Question — and Beyond
Can a creative technique that works for third-graders help grad students launch their research careers? In December of 2015 the John Templeton Foundation approved a three-year, $700,000 grant to the Cambridge, Mass.-based Right Question Institute with the ambitious goal of empowering teachers in a million primary and secondary-school classrooms worldwide to teach their students to ask better questions. The institute’s approach, distilled into a streamlined Question Formulation Technique (QFT), guides students through a process of generating questions, prioritizing, and reflecting on what they learned as a means to identify the most important and most interesting questions. The ultimate goal is…
