Templeton "was a great believer in progress, learning, initiative and the power of human imagination—not to mention the free-enterprise system". the
Black Hole Initiative at
Harvard University; the
Gen2Gen Encore Prize; the
World Science Festival;
Pew religious demographics surveys; and programs that engage with Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions, including support for dialogue with scientists in synagogues, and a grant for advancing scientific literacy in
madrasas. , the foundation awarded nearly a billion dollars in grants and charitable contributions and was the 55th largest grantor among American foundations.
Physics at
Harvard University received a Templeton Foundation grant of over seven million dollars in 2016.
QISS (Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime) The John Templeton Foundation granted over two million dollars in 2019, and then 4.5 million dollars in 2022 to QISS. The QISS consortium brings together specialists from
quantum gravity,
quantum information, foundations of
quantum mechanics, as well
Philosophy of Science. According to the organization, "QISS aims to found the physics of quantum
spacetime on an information theoretical basis, bring within reach empirical access to
quantum gravity phenomenology leveraging rapidly advancing quantum technologies, and promote interactions between physicists and philosophers. The broader scope of the consortium is to establish a long-term research program that brings together the represented communities." Marios Christodoulou and
Carlo Rovelli are the project leaders.
Black Hole Initiative In 2016, the foundation granted over seven million dollars to the
Black Hole Initiative (BHI), an interdisciplinary program at
Harvard University that includes the fields of
Astronomy,
Physics and
Philosophy, and is said to be the first center in the world to focus on the study of
black holes. Notable principal participants include Sheperd Doeleman,
Peter Galison,
Avi Loeb,
Ramesh Narayan,
Andrew Strominger, and
Shing-Tung Yau. related workshop events were held on 19 April 2016.
Biology and human development supports the study of what factors led human ancestors to things such as toolmaking. . In 2016, the foundation awarded $5.4 million to the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) to study the origin of life on Earth, particularly investigating questions of how early
RNA interacted with water, which is necessary for life but also degrades RNA, and how the introduction of energy to organic materials yielded life rather than turning it into tar. Several grants specifically supported inquiry into various aspects of human evolution. A 2014 grant of $4.9 million supports an effort at
Arizona State University by
paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson to explore how we became human, and a $3.2 million grant to
Indiana University and the
Stone Age Institute supports the study of "what factors led human ancestors to develop skills like making tools, developing language, and seeking out information". A grant from the foundation supports a study of religion and health conducted by
Tyler VanderWeele of
Harvard University. VanderWeele is the
John L. Loeb and
Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of
Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and co-director the University's Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality. His research has focused on the application of
causal inference to epidemiology, as well as on the relationship between
religion and health. In June 2019, the foundation awarded one of its largest grants to the Blavatnik Institute at
Harvard Medical School for its
Ancient DNA Atlas project that seeks to sequence the DNA of ancient human remains to tell the story of human migration and development through the addition of DNA sequences of 10,000 individuals spanning 50,000 years. The funding was used to solve a riddle that had puzzled historians, classicists, linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists for 200 years - whether the bulk of the
European civilization had arrived from
Anatolia or the
Pontic Steppes of
Central Asia, and how
Indo-European languages
spread over an enormous geographical area from
Britain to
India, becoming the largest
linguistic group today. The funding was used to embrace a multi-disciplinary approach and crowd-sourced results before the final manuscripts were completed, receiving commentary and feedback from academics of various institutions on several continents, according to geneticist
David Reich, The current director of the center, the
Chinese American Christian scholar
Fenggang Yang, has been granted more than $9.5 million to support his projects, The center has published research on
religion in China, especially based on Yang's own theory of the so-called "religious market", with speculations were based on a report of the Pew Research Center, another publication backed by the foundation. Some scholars of Chinese religion have criticized Yang's sociological theories about religion in China, although the
New York Times has referred to Yang as "a pioneer in the study of the sociology of religion in China", and the
Wall Street Journal has deemed him a "leading scholar on Chinese church-society relation".
Psychology Positive psychology, religion and medicine Harold G. Koenig, Dale Mathews, David Larson, Jeffrey Levin,
Herbert Benson and
Michael McCullough are scholars to whom the foundation has provided funds to "report the positive relations" between
religion and medicine. One field in which the foundation has been particularly supportive is
positive psychology, as developed by
Martin Seligman,
Angela Duckworth and others. or "the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels that include the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life". Positive psychology is concerned with
eudaimonia, "the good life", reflection about what holds the greatest value in life – the factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the
American Psychological Association.
Scientific development of virtue interventions In 2019, the foundation awarded $2.6 million grant to Sarah Schnitker of
Baylor University and Benjamin Houltberg of the
University of Southern California to "galvanize widespread scientific development of virtue interventions for adolescents across a diversity of contexts". A grant from the foundation supports a study of religion and health conducted by
Tyler VanderWeele of
Harvard University. VanderWeele is the
John L. Loeb and
Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of
Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and co-director the University's Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality. His research has focused on the application of
causal inference to epidemiology, as well as on the relationship between
religion and health. ==Reception==