UCL SSEES: M B Grabowski Memorial Lecture 2009 - Professor Michał Heller

Please note that admission can only be permitted to those who have informed the Director's Office by 4 November. The lecture will be followed by a wine reception in the Masaryk Senior Common Room, Fourth Floor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 16 Taviton Street, London WC1.

Michał Heller is a mathematical cosmologist who has championed a world view that combines mathematical physics, theology and philosophy. Born in Tarnów in 1936, his family fled to the Soviet Union to escape the advancing Nazi invaders. During a roundup of Polish refugees, the Hellers were sent to a labour camp in Yakutia, Siberia. They returned to Poland after the Second World War where Heller continued his education, receiving a master's degree in theology. He was ordained in 1959 and the following year began courses in science and mathematics at the Catholic University of Lublin. He received a master's degree in philosophy in 1965, a doctorate in 1966 and a habilitation degree in 1969 with a thesis titled Mach's Principle in Relativistic Cosmology.

Michał Heller is now a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków and has been visiting professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, the University of Liège, the Universities of Oxford and Leicester, the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo.

In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities in honour of his dedication to understanding and explaining the interaction of science and religion. He plans to spend the prize money on the establishment of a research institute named after Nicholas Copernicus.

This page last modified Tuesday 6 October 2009.