Sir John Templeton

Sir John Templeton, a Tennessee-born investor and philanthropist who amassed a fortune in global stocks and gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to foster understanding in what he called "spiritual realities," died on Tuesday in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he had lived for decades. He was 95.

His death, at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, was caused by pneumonia, said Don Lehr, a spokesman for the Templeton Foundation.

The foundation awards the Templeton Prize, one of the world's richest, and sponsors conferences and studies reflecting the founder's passionate interest in "progress in religion" and "research or discoveries" on the nebulous borders of science and religion.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Sir John dazzled Wall Street, organized some of the most successful mutual funds of his time, led investors into foreign markets, established charities that now give away $70 million a year, wrote books on finance and spirituality and promoted a search for answers to what he called the "Big Questions" — realms of science, faith, God and the purpose of humanity.

Along the way, he became one of the world's richest men, gave up American citizenship, moved to the Bahamas, was knighted by the Queen of England and bestowed much of his fortune on spiritual thinkers and innovators: Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the physicist Freeman Dyson, the philosopher Charles Taylor and a pantheon of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.

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