John Polkinghorne Biography
The Reverend Canon John Polkinghorne (KBE FRS) is an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer, and Anglican priest. He served as the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge from 1988 until 1996. He is known for being a prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion.
John was a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982.
He is the author of five books on physics and 26 on the relationship between science and religion; these include The Quantum World, Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion, and Questions of Truth. The Polkinghorne Reader provides key excerpts from Polkinghorne’s most influential books.
John was knighted in 1997 and in 2002 received the £1 million Templeton Prize, awarded for exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.
John Polkinghorne Age
John was born John Charlton Polkinghorne on 16 October 1930. He was born and raised in Weston-super-Mare, England. He is 88 years old as of 2018.
John Polkinghorne Family
John was born to Dorothy Charlton, the daughter of a groom and George Polkinghorne, who worked for the post office. He was the couple’s third child.
He had a brother, Peter, and a sister, Ann, who died when she was six, one month before his birth. Peter died in 1942 while flying for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
John Polkinghorne Wife
He is the husband of Ruth Martin, an author. He met Ruth while at Cambridge when he joined the Christian Union of UCCF.
They married on 26 March 1955, and at the end of that year sailed from Liverpool to New York.
John Polkinghorne Children
He has three children with Ruth; Peter (born in 1957), Isobel (born in 1959) and Michael (born in 1963).
John Polkinghorne Educational Background
He was educated at the Street, Somerset, a local primary school, then taught at home by a family friend, and then at a Quaker school. He went to Elmhurst Grammar School in Street at the age of 11, and when his father was promoted to head postmaster in Ely in 1945, Polkinghorne was transferred to Cambridge’s Perse School.
After serving as a National Service in the Royal Army Educational Corps from 1948 to 1949, he read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduated as Senior Wrangler in 1952, then earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1955, supervised by Nobel laureate Abdus Salam in the group led by Paul Dirac.
John Polkinghorne Career
John joined the Christian Union of UCCF while at Cambridge. After marrying and moving to New York, Polkinghorne accepted a postdoctoral Harkness Fellowship with the California Institute of Technology. There, he worked with Murray Gell-Mann. Toward the end of the fellowship, he was given a position as lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, which he took up in 1956.
John returned to teach at Cambridge in 1958 after two years in Scotland. He was promoted to reader in 1965, and in 1968 was offered a professorship in mathematical physics, a position he held until 1979.
For more than 20 years, he studied and worked on theories about elementary particles and played a role in the discovery of the quark (a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter), and researched the analytic and high-energy properties of Feynman integrals and the foundations of S-Matrix theory.
While employed by Cambridge, he also spent time at Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, and at CERN in Geneva. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.
John chose to train for the priesthood in 1977. He resigned his chair in 1979 to study at Westcott House, Cambridge, an Anglican theological college. He became an ordained priest on 6 June 1982. His ordination ceremony was held at Trinity College, Cambridge and was presided over by Bishop John A. T. Robinson.
He worked as a curate for five years in south Bristol, then as vicar in Blean, Kent, before returning to Cambridge in 1986 as dean of chapel at Trinity Hall. He became the president of Queens’ College the same year. He held the position until his retirement in 1996. He served as canon theologian of Liverpool Cathedral for almost ten years.
John Polkinghorne Books
The Polkinghorne Reader: Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning
The Way the World is: The Christian Perspective of a Scientist
One World
Science and Creation
Science and Providence
Reason and Reality: Relationship Between Science and Theology
Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity
The Faith of a Physicist
Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue
Scientists as Theologians
Beyond Science: The wider human context
Searching for Truth
Belief in God in an Age of Science
Science and Theology
The End of the World and the Ends of God
Traffic in Truth: Exchanges Between Sciences and Theology
Faith, Science, and Understanding
The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosiseditor
The God of Hope and the End of the World
The Archbishop’s School of Christianity and Science
‘Science and Christian Faith’
Living with Hope
Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter With Reality
Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science & Religion
Quantum Physics & Theology: An Unexpected Kinship
From Physicist to Priest, an Autobiography
Theology in the Context of Science
Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief,
Reason and Reality: The Relationship Between Science and Theology
Science and Religion in Quest of Truth
‘Hawking, Dawkins and GOD’
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John’s Books About Science
The Analytic S-Matrix
The Particle Play
Models of High Energy Processes
The Quantum World
Rochester Roundabout: The Story of High Energy Physics
Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction
Meaning in Mathematics
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Chapters
“The Trinity and Scientific Theology” in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity
On Space and Time
Spiritual Information: 100 Perspectives on Science and Religion
Creation, Law, and Probability
“Physical Processes, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency,” in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
John Polkinghorne Quotes
- I’m a very passionate believer in the unity of knowledge. There is one world of reality – one world of our experience that we’re seeking to describe.
- If the experience of science teaches anything, it’s that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
- Those theologians who are beginning to take the doctrine of creation very seriously should pay some attention to science’s story.
- I very much enjoyed my career in science. I didn’t leave science because I was disillusioned but felt I’d done my bit for it after about twenty-five years.
John Polkinghorne Net Worth
As of 2019, his net worth is under review.
John Polkinghorne Website
For John’s books and other educational theories, visit his website at questionsoftruth.org