Physics Today: Michael (Michał) Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest who research specializes on the origin and cause of the universe, often under intense governmental repression, has won the 2008 $1.6 million Templeton Prize.

Heller's current work focuses on noncommutative geometry and groupoid theory in mathematics which attempts to remove the problem of an initial cosmological singularity at the origin of the universe. "If on the fundamental level of physics there is no space and no time, as many physicists think," says Heller, "noncommutative geometry could be a suitable tool to deal with such a situation."

Heller described his philosophy earlier today as

"Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one… (and) there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God's thinking the universe, the question on ultimate causality…: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes."

The 2008 Templeton Prize will be officially awarded to Heller by HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in the UK on Wednesday, May 7th.

Heller plans to dedicate the Templeton Prize money to help create the Copernicus Center in conjunction with Jagiellonian University and the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow to further research and education in science and theology as an academic discipline.