This year's winner of the Templeton Prize, an award worth about $1.4 million, has been given to astronomer John Barrow whose work on the Anthropic Principle has done so much to convince people that the universe is not merely a grand accident. The Prize was founded in 1972 by philanthropist and global financial pioneer Sir John Templeton and is given annually to a living person to encourage and honor the advancement of knowledge in spiritual matters. It's the world's best known religion prize and the largest annual monetary prize of any kind given to an individual.
In establishing the prize's monetary value, Sir John stipulated that it always be worth more than the Nobel Prizes as a way to underscore his belief that research and advances in spiritual discoveries can be quantifiably more significant than work done in the disciplines recognized by the Nobels.
For more on Barrow and the Templeton go here.