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John Charlton Polkinghorne is born
Location: Weston-super-Mare, England O’Connor, J. J. and Robertson, E. F.. “John Charlton Polkinghorne”, MT MacTutor. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, July 2008, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Polkinghorne/. Accessed 06 October 2023. -
Pre-College Years
By 1948, John Charles Polkinghorne finished attending grammar school at Perse School in Cambridge. His prowess in mathematics won him a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge where he started attending in October 1949 (O’Connor and Robertson). -
1949-1979 Career in Quantum Mechanics
After completing his Ph.D., specializing in applied and pure mathematics, he went on to improve his education under different tutors at Trinity College and California Institute of Technology. Ultimately, his contributions to mathematical physics earned him an invitation to the London Royal Society in 1974 (O’Connor and Robertson). -
1979 Student Again!
John C. Polkinghorne started to make a transition in career path towards seminary school and at the age of 48. The Christian faith always had an influence on him while growing up and as a mathematician, he saw science as a method of understanding the actual world while being kept in check by a superseding discovery that would replace that understanding (Rolnick 2-3). -
1982 Reverend John C. Polkinghorne
Reductionism had lost the persuasiveness it had in his early career and found the creative interpretation of experience as a more reliable philosophy. Polkinghorne saw that both science and religion could work together to confront new phenomena, suggesting that “God, being pure spirit, might act on the world through top-down inputs of ‘active information’ (Rolnick 23-24). -
Late Years of John C. Polkinghorne
John C. Polkinghorne by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 for his services to science, religion, learning, and medical ethics (Rolnick 21). He later received the Templeton Prize in 2002 for his contributions in bridging the gap between theology and natural science (O’Connor and Robertson). He continued to be a defender of the authenticity of the Bible and passed away on 9 March 2021 in Cambridge, England (O’Connor and Robertson). -
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Bibliography
Rolnick, Philip. “In Memoriam: John Polkinghorne—A Life Well Lived.” Logos (Saint Paul, Minn.), vol. 24, no. 4, 2021, pp. 21–26, https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2021.0024. O’Connor, J. J. and Robertson, E. F.. “John Charlton Polkinghorne”, MT MacTutor. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, July 2008, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Polkinghorne/. Accessed 06 October 2023. -
Video
I think this video illustrates who John C Polkinghorne, the world-renowned Scientist Philospher Reverend, before he passed away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0myDDLLH1n4