Conway Morris joins past laureates Freeman Dyson, the Dalai Lama, and Jane Goodall to receive one of the world’s largest individual lifetime achievement awards Professor Simon Conway Morris, a groundbreaking paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the 2026 Templeton Prize for his outstanding contributions to the field of evolutionary biology and his enduring efforts to explore the broader human implications of his scientific discoveries. Professor Conway Morris is internationally recognized for his pioneering research on the Cambrian explosion and his meticulous analysis of the Burgess Shale fauna. These studies have significantly reshaped our understanding of the early evolution of animal body plans and the dynamics of evolutionary innovation. Conway Morris’s most distinctive contribution is the articulation and empirical substantiation of evolutionary convergence—the recurrence of similar biological forms and behaviors across vastly different evolutionary lineages. Vision and many other sensory organs, as well as wings, fins, and other forms of locomotion have all evolved numerous times, independently, in different periods of Earth’s history. To Conway Morris, these are not just curious coincidences, but …