HELLER, Michael

Fr. Michael Heller

Michał Kazimierz Heller, is a professor of philosophy at the The Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff. He also served as a lecturer in the philosophy of science and logic at the Theological Institute in Tarnów. A Roman Catholic priest belonging to the diocese of Tarnów, Dr. Heller was ordained in 1959.

Michał Heller graduated from the Catholic University of Lublin, where he earned a master's degree in philosophy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in cosmology in 1966.After beginning his teaching career at Tarnów, he joined the faculty of the Pontifical Academy of Theology in 1972 and was appointed to a full professorship in 1985. The recipient of an honorary degree from the Technical University of Cracow, he has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and a visiting scientist at Belgium’s University of Liège, the University of Oxford, the University of Leicester, Ruhr University in Germany, The Catholic University of America, and the University of Arizona among others. Dr. Heller is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

He has published nearly 200 scientific papers not only in general relativity and relativistic cosmology, but also in philosophy and the history of science and science and theology and is the author of more than 20 books. In March 2008, Heller was awarded the Templeton Prize for his extensive philosophical and scientific probing of "big questions." His works have sought to reconcile the "known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God."