The Trotter Prize is awarded at Texas A&M and is part of an endowed lecture series. It is awarded "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature" and includes The Trotter Lecture which "seeks to reveal connections between science and religion, often viewed in academia as non-overlapping, if not rival, worldviews.

Robert L. Park

Robert L. Park

Robert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...

 criticized the award for being given William A. Dembski

William A. Dembski

William Albert "Bill" Dembski is an American proponent of intelligent design, well known for promoting the concept of specified complexity...

 for inappropriately attempting to force science and religion together.

Previous winners

Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winners Charles Hard Townes

Charles Hard Townes

Charles Hard Townes is an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator. Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he got the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices. He shared the Nobel...

 and Francis Crick

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...

 received the inaugural award at A&M's Rudder Theater in 2002. Townes spoke about connections between science and faith. Promoter of the pseudoscientific

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...

 notion of intelligent design

Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

 William A. Dembski

William A. Dembski

William Albert "Bill" Dembski is an American proponent of intelligent design, well known for promoting the concept of specified complexity...

 shared the award in 2005 with theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman

Stuart Kauffman

Stuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth...

. Simon Conway Morris

Simon Conway Morris

Simon Conway Morris FRS is an English paleontologist made known by his detailed and careful study of the Burgess Shale fossils, an exploit celebrated in Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould...

 received the award and spoke in 2007. Francis Collins

Francis Collins

Francis Collins may refer to:*Francis Collins , geneticist*Francis Dolan Collins , 19th century American politician-See also:*Frank Collins *Francis Collings, BBC journalist*Francis Collin, English footballer...

, the director of the human genome project

Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...

, and Stephen Weinberg, a Nobel Prize recipient for physics, shared the Trotter Prize in 2008 and discussed the interplay between science and religion. Astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich

Owen Gingerich

Dr. Owen Jay Gingerich is a former Research Professor of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University, and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory...

 also won the prize.

Robert L. Park

Robert L. Park

Robert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...

 has criticized the award for being given to William A. Dembski

William A. Dembski

William Albert "Bill" Dembski is an American proponent of intelligent design, well known for promoting the concept of specified complexity...

, proponent of the pseudoscientific

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...

 concept of intelligent design

Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

, saying it is given out for "overlapping the magisteria" (a comment based on Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....

's concept of non-overlapping magisteria

Non-overlapping magisteria

Non-overlapping magisteria is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that "science and religion do not glower at each other... [but] interdigitate in patterns of complex fingering, and at every fractal scale of self-similarity." He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys strong and fully...

, NOMA, the idea that science and religion inherently do not overlap). .

Honorees/ speakers

• 2010 Francis Everitt, Research Professor W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford University gave a talk titled Mystery in Science, Reason in Religion: How the Two Intersect and Overlap and Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford gave a talk titled Did the Universe Have a Beginning?

• 2009 Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard University spoke on the Mystery in Science, Reason in Religion: How the Two Intersect and Overlap and Charles Townes, professor emeritus at University of California Berkeley and 1964 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, spoke on The Parallelism and Likely Eventual Convergence of Science and Religion
• 2008 Francis S. Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health gave a talk titled The Language of God and Steven Weinberg, 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient and professor of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Texas gave a talk titled Without God
• 2007 Simon Conway Morris, professor of Earth Sciences and holder of the Chair in Evolutionary Paleobiology at the University of Cambridge spoke on Darwin's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation
• 2006 Freeman J. Dyson, winner of the 2000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion Winner and Professor Emeritus of physics at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study spoke on Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society
• 2005 William D. Phillips, 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics Winner and Research Group Leader at the Physics Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology gave a talk titled Ordinary Faith, Ordinary Science
• 2005 William Dembski Associate Research Professor at Baylor University gave a talk titled Intelligent Design's Place in the Natural Sciences and Stuart Kauffman, Director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary, gave a talk titled Toward a Physical Definition of Life
• 2004 Paul Davies, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University gave a talk titled Did Life Come From Mars? and Robert Shapiro, Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer of Chemistry at New York University spoke on Science & Myth in the Origin of Life
• 2003 Alan Guth, Father of the "inflationary universe" theory and Professor of Physics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave a talk titled Cosmic Inflation and the Origin of the Universe and John Polkinghorne an Anglican Priest and Former Professor of Mathematical Physics and President of Queens' College, Cambridge spoke on The Universe as Creation
• 2002 Francis Crick, 1962 Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine and Physiology who works at The Salk Institute gave a talk titled The Astonishing Hypothesis and Charles Townes, 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics at the University of California-Berkeley gave a talk titled The Convergence of Science and Religion