Articles of faith: Proof that there is a G_d

A leading quantum physicist who believes science alone cannot explain "ultimate reality" has been awarded the world's largest monetary prize for his contribution to religious thought.

Bernard d'Espagnat, 87, was today announced as the winner of the £1 million Templeton Prize, founded by the late US multi-millionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir John Templeton to honour scientists who contribute to progress in religion.

Dr d'Espagnat, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at Paris-Sud university, believes that science cannot fully explain "the nature of being".

In a nominating letter Nidhal Guessoum, chair of physics at American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, wrote that d'Espagnat "has constructed a coherent body of work which shows why it is credible that the human mind is capable of perceiving deeper realities".

Dr d'Espagnat said in prepared remarks that, since science cannot reveal anything certain about the nature of being, it cannot tell us with certainty what it is not.

"Mystery is not something negative that has to be eliminated," he said. "On the contrary, it is one of the constitutive elements of being."

He said that he is "convinced that those among our contemporaries who believe in a spiritual dimension of existence and live up to it are, when all is said, fully right".

Speaking to The Times, Dr d'Espagnat, a Roman Catholic, said his work as a physicist had convinced him of the existence of a deeper reality. "When we hear great classical music or look at very great paintings, they are not just illusions but could be a revelation of something fundamental. I would accept calling it God or divine or Godhead but with the restriction that it cannot be conceptualised for the very reason that this ultimate reality is beyond any concept that we can construct."

His main contribution to the development of quantum mechanics was made from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s when he carried out experiments testing the "Bell's inequalities" theorem. His work centred on a concept described as "veiled reality", a reality that is hidden beneath what is perceived as time, space, matter, and energy, concepts challenged by quantum physics as possibly mere appearances.

Results published in 1981 and 1982 were regarded as important contributions to the later development of "quantum information science", an area of research that combines physics, information science and mathematics.

The son of a leading post-impressionist painter, d’Espagnat also argues that other methods of observation such as the arts can provide windows to understanding reality.

The Duke of Edinburgh will present the prize to Dr d'Espagnat on 5 May in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

John Templeton Jr, son of Sir John and Chairman and President of the John Templeton Foundation, said that d’Espagnat had consistently employed the most rigorous scientific standards to expand the potential of what science may tell us far beyond the laboratory. "Instead of simply measuring the limits of quantum physics," he said, "he has explored the unlimited, the openings that new scientific discoveries offer in pure knowledge and in questions that go to the very heart of our existence and humanity."

Bruno Guiderdoni, director of the Observatoire de Lyon at the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, remembers attending one of d’Espagnat’s lectures as a graduate student in 1980, a time when quantum physics was presented merely as a series of computational recipes. "I was deeply impressed by the philosophical implications of what he was addressing," he says. "One has to understand that these issues were completely absent from the usual lecture courses in quantum physics… he helped me understand that there was actually a very deep question in this issue."