Ian Ramsey Centre

for science and religion in the University of Oxford

Peter Harrison BSc, BA(Hons), PhD (Qld) MA (Yale) MA (Oxon) FAHA

Professor Peter Harrison is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College. He read for degrees in Science and Arts at the University of Queensland before taking up a scholarship at Yale University to study philosophy and religion. On returning to Australia, he completed his PhD at the University of Queensland. He has held visiting fellowships at a number of institutions including Yale University, the Centre of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary Medal for his contributions to Philosophy and Religion. Before his election to the Idreos Chair, he was Professor of History and Philosophy at Bond University in Australia.

Prof. Harrison has published extensively in the area of cultural and intellectual history, with a focus on the philosophical, scientific and religious thought of the early modern period. His publications include 'Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, 1998), The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge 2007) and over 50 book chapters and journal articles. He is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (Cambridge, 2010) and will deliver the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 2010-11.

The Andreas Idreos Professorship is an interdisciplinary chair devoted to research and teaching in questions raised for theology by the natural, human and social sciences. Andreas Idreos studied medicine at the University of Athens and spent the majority of his career working for the World Health Organization . He came to believe that science and religion could together foster understanding between cultures and provide a basis for unity and the alleviation of suffering. In 1990 he founded the Idreos lectures in Science and Religion at Oxford, and, before his death, completed the endowment for the new chair, which is associated with Harris Manchester College. Prof. Harrison took up this post following the retirement of the first holder of the Idreos Chair, Prof. John Hedley Brooke.