32 Facts About John Polkinghorne

John Charlton Polkinghorne was an English theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest.

John Polkinghorne served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1988 until 1996.

The John Polkinghorne Reader provides key excerpts from John Polkinghorne's most influential books.

John Polkinghorne was born in Weston-super-Mare on 16 October 1930 to Dorothy Charlton, the daughter of a groom and George John Polkinghorne, who worked for the post office.

John Polkinghorne had a brother, Peter, and a sister, Ann, who died when she was six, one month before John's birth.

John Polkinghorne was educated at the local primary school in Street, Somerset, then was taught by a friend of the family at home, and later at a Quaker school.

When he was 11 he went to Elmhurst Grammar School in Street, and when his father was promoted to head postmaster in Ely in 1945, John Polkinghorne was transferred to The Perse School, Cambridge.

John Polkinghorne joined the Christian Union of UCCF while at Cambridge and met his future wife, Ruth Martin, another member of the union and a mathematics student.

John Polkinghorne accepted a postdoctoral Harkness Fellowship with the California Institute of Technology, where he worked with Murray Gell-Mann.

John Polkinghorne was promoted to reader in 1965, and in 1968 was offered a professorship in mathematical physics, a position he held until 1979, his students including Brian Josephson and Martin Rees.

John Polkinghorne was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.

John Polkinghorne said in an interview that he felt he had done his bit for science after 25 years, and that his best mathematical work was probably behind him; Christianity had always been central to his life, so ordination offered an attractive second career.

John Polkinghorne resigned his chair in 1979 to study at Westcott House, Cambridge, an Anglican theological college, becoming an ordained priest on 6 June 1982.

John Polkinghorne worked for five years as a curate in south Bristol, then as vicar in Blean, Kent, before returning to Cambridge in 1986 as dean of chapel at Trinity Hall.

John Polkinghorne became the president of Queens' College that year, a position he held until his retirement in 1996.

John Polkinghorne served as canon theologian of Liverpool Cathedral from 1994 to 2005.

John Polkinghorne died on 9 March 2021 at the age of 90.

John Polkinghorne was an honorary fellow of St Chad's College, Durham, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Durham in 1998; and in 2002 was awarded the Templeton Prize for his contributions to research at the interface between science and religion.

John Polkinghorne spoke on "The Universe as Creation" at the Trotter Prize ceremony in 2003.

John Polkinghorne has been a member of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee, the General Synod of the Church of England, the Doctrine Commission, and the Human Genetics Commission.

John Polkinghorne served as chairman of the governors of The Perse School from 1972 to 1981.

John Polkinghorne was a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, and was for 10 years a canon theologian of Liverpool Cathedral.

John Polkinghorne was a founding member of the Society of Ordained Scientists and of the International Society for Science and Religion, of which he was the first president.

John Polkinghorne was a member of staff of the Psychology and Religion Research Group at Cambridge University.

John Polkinghorne was an honorary fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge.

John Polkinghorne argues there are five points of comparison between the ways in which science and theology pursue truth: moments of enforced radical revision, a period of unresolved confusion, new synthesis and understanding, continued wrestling with unresolved problems, deeper implications.

John Polkinghorne suggests that the mechanistic explanations of the world that have continued from Laplace to Richard Dawkins should be replaced by an understanding that most of nature is cloud-like rather than clock-like.

John Polkinghorne is very doubtful of St Anselm's Ontological Argument.

The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized John Polkinghorne for using primitive thinking and rhetorical devices instead of engaging in philosophy.

When John Polkinghorne argues that the minute adjustments of cosmological constants for life points towards an explanation beyond the scientific realm, Blackburn argues that this relies on a natural preference for explanation in terms of agency.

John Polkinghorne has done that very successfully for a generation, and for this he ought to be both appreciated and emulated.

John Polkinghorne has written 34 books, translated into 18 languages; 26 concern science and religion, often for a popular audience.