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Donald Lehr / (212) 967-8200
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Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Opens in Krakow, Poland

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

The Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, funded in large part by 2008 Templeton Prize Laureate, Professor Michael Heller, was formally opened today at a ceremony in the Collegium Maius of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

The Center, a joint venture between the Jagiellonian University and the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, was established to further research and education in science and theology as an academic discipline.

Chairing the opening ceremonies were Professor Karol Musiol, rector of the Jagiellonian University, and Rev. Professor Jan Maciej Dyduch, rector of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. Joining the festivities were Professor Heller and Charles L. Harper, Jr., D.Phil., Senior Executive Vice President of the John Templeton Foundation, which awards the Prize. Subsequently, the agreement between the two universities establishing the Copernicus Center was officially signed.

The Templeton Prize, valued in 2008 at 820,000 pounds sterling, more than $1.6 million, was awarded to Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest Michael Heller at Buckingham Palace in London on May 7th. Heller announced his plans to dedicate the Prize, the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual, to the creation of the Copernicus Center at a March 12th news conference in New York City.

Thursday's inauguration kicked off a two-day conference organized jointly by the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Informatics of the Jagiellonian University and the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. The conference theme, "Whether science will replace religion," will be examined by distinguished Polish scholars from various disciplines including mathematics, physics, biology, philosophy, theology, and law.

Research at the Copernicus Center will focus on mutual relations among theology, science, and philosophy, including astronomy and cosmology, biology, mathematics, physics, and the history of science. The Center will organize course lectures, public lectures, and seminars, and publish two monograph series and a yearbook, For Philosophy and Science, in English and Polish. To date, research teams established within the Center include:

• Copernican Group;
• Science and Religion;
• Philosophy of Cosmology;
• Mathematical Foundations of Cosmology;
• Generalized Geometries and their Applications in Physics;
• Philosophy and History of Physics;
• History of Mathematics: People, Ideas, Philosophical Aspects;
• Neurobiology;
• Methodology and Philosophy of Science;
• Analytical Metaphysics;
• Polish Philosophy of Nature in the First Half of the 20th Century; and
• Naturalized Normative Sciences.