TIME has named paleoanthropologist Tim White, who led the team that discovered the 4.4 million-year-old skeleton known as “Ardi,” to its annual “most influential” list.
Back in October, we asked White how important it is that we find the last common ancestor of chimps and humans, and he told us:

The more important questions for most people involve WHETHER we evolved, and HOW we evolved since we diverged from the lines that led to the extant apes. Anatomy of living forms, fossils, and genetics all independently answer the first question the same way: Yes. And fossils and genetics are also combining to reveal HOW we evolved, although there is a good deal more evidence that will reveal even more. That’s why we go to the field every year to gather more evidence and gain more knowledge. And it’s why we search in rocks of many ages, not just those older than 6 million years.

Francisco Ayala, an evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and former Dominican priest who argues there is no inherent contradiction between science and religion, is the 2010 Templeton Prize winner. He is accepting the award this morning at a press conference (and live Web cast) at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. (Ayala is an NAS member and was nominated for the prize by NAS President Ralph Cicerone.)
For more than 30 years, Ayala, born in Spain and now a professor at the University of California, Irvine, has vigorously opposed blurring the boundaries between science and faith, seeing efforts to block religion from intruding into science as necessary to ensure “the survival of rationality in this country.” At the same time, he believes faith can help us better understand things like purpose, values, and the meaning of life. Science and religion have separate roles, he says, but both are valuable—and only seem contradictory and antithetical when they go beyond their scope.
In prepared remarks, he uses Picasso’s painting “Guernica” to illustrate his point:

Suppose that I list the coordinates of all images represented in the painting, their shape and size, the pigments used, and the quality and dimensions of this immense canvas, measuring 25 feet, 8 inches by 11 feet, 6 inches. This information would be interesting, but it would be hardly satisfying if I completely omitted aesthetic considerations and failed to reflect on the painting’s meaning and purpose, the dramatic message of man’s inhumanity to man conveyed by the outstretched figure of the mother pulling her dead baby, the bellowing human faces, the wounded horse, and the Satanic image of the bull.
The point is that the physical description of the painting does not tell us anything (by itself cannot tell us anything) about the aesthetic value or historical significance of Guernica; nor, on the other hand, do aesthetics or intended meaning determine the physical features of the painting.

Ayala trained as a scientist under Theodosius Dobzhansky at Columbia University, writing his thesis on how rates of evolution depend on the genetic variation of a species. He’s since developed ways of pinpointing the timing of precise steps in the evolution of a species over millions of years and studied the parasites that cause Chagas and other tropical diseases, as well as malaria.
In 1981, he was an expert witness in the important Arkansas creationism trial (which overturned a law mandating the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in science class), and from 1993 to 1996, he was president of AAAS, where he developed the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. He served on Bill Clinton’s President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, and in 2001, George W. Bush awarded him the National Medal of Science.
Ayala has long been a staunch defender of the teaching of evolution in public school and a strong critic of “intelligent design.” To him, there is no natural hostility between evolution and faith—and the theory of evolution is actually more consistent with belief in a benevolent God than creationism or ID. As he explains:

The point should be valid for those people of faith who believe in a personal God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent, as Christians, Muslims, and Jews do believe. The natural world abounds in catastrophes, disasters, imperfections, dysfunctions, suffering, and cruelty. Tsunamis and earthquakes bring destruction and death to hundreds of thousands of citizens; floods and droughts bring ruin to farmers. The human jaw is poorly designed; lions devour their prey; malaria parasites kill millions of humans every year and make 500 million people very sick; about 20 percent of all human pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion because of the flawed design of the human reproductive system.
People of faith should not attribute all this misery, cruelty, and destruction to the specific design of the Creator. I rather see it as a consequence of the clumsy ways of nature and the evolutionary process.

The Templeton Prize, valued at about 1.53 million dollars, celebrates someone who has made “exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” It will be officially awarded to Ayala by Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London on May 5.

The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology has awarded its biannual ESSSAT Research Prize to Aku Visala for his philosophical analysis of cognitive theories of religion, “Religion Explained?” (his doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki).
As ESSSAT explains its decision:

Cognitive theories of religion draw on the analysis of our evolved cognitive faculties in order to understand religion. The jury found that Visala deals with a major current development of substantial complexity. His writing displays a strong grasp of relevant literature, also from neighboring fields. The work engages the issues in a mature way, coming up with well considered criticisms of others and an analysis of his own. Last but not least, the work is well written and focused.

The prize will be presented to Visala, now a visiting fellow at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the University of Oxford, at the 13th European Conference on Science and Theology in Edinburgh from April 7 to 11.

Congratulations to the winners of New Scientist’s Sampling Darwin contest, which asked readers to incorporate the last sentence of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species into a new work of art. That picture above? An ink drawing by Richard Amm. Here’s the list of things to look for:

Embryo development diagram
“There is grandeur” sentence
Gravitation equation
Darwin branching drawing
Brain
Abiogenesis (chemicals to bacteria)
Earth
Words “I think”
Beetles
Dinosaur with wings.
Butterflies
Peas in a pod
Artist’s Name
Lots of different finch beaks
Drake equation
DNA double helix x2
Mushrooms
Ammonites