By Larry B. Stammer, Times Staff Writer...............03/11/05
Charles Townes, the UC Berkeley professor who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum electronics and then startled the scientific world by suggesting that religion and science were converging, was awarded the $1.5-million Templeton Prize on Wednesday for progress in spiritual knowledge.
The prize, the proceeds of which Townes said he planned to largely donate to academic and religious institutions, recognized his groundbreaking and controversial leadership in the mid-1960s in bridging science and religion.
The co-inventor of the laser, Townes, 89, said no greater question faced humankind than discovering the purpose and meaning of life — and why there was something rather than nothing in the cosmos.
Townes said that it was "extremely unlikely" that the laws of physics that led to life on Earth were accidental.
Some scientists, he conceded, had suggested that if there were an almost infinite number of universes, each with different laws, one of them was bound by chance to hit upon the right combination to support life. "I think one has to consider that seriously," Townes told The Times. But he said such an assumption could not currently be tested. Even if there were a multitude of universes, he said, we do not know why the laws of physics would vary from one universe to another.
In 1964, while a professor at Columbia University, Townes delivered a talk at Riverside Church in New York that became the basis for an article, "The Convergence of Science and Religion," which put him at odds with some scientists. In the article, Townes said science and religion should find common ground, noting "their differences are largely superficial, and … the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each." When MIT published the article, a prominent alumnus threatened to break ties with the institution.
In a 1996 interview with The Times, Townes said that new findings in astronomy had opened people's minds to religion. Before the 1960s, the Big Bang was just an idea that was hotly debated. Today, there is so much evidence supporting the theory that most cosmologists take it for granted.
"The fact that the universe had a beginning is a very striking thing," Townes said. "How do you explain that unique event" without God?