John M. Templeton, Jr., 75, president and chairman of John Templeton Foundation

John M. Templeton Jr., 75, of Bryn Mawr, president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, and a former pediatric surgeon and director of the trauma program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, died Saturday, May 16, at home.

The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Heather Templeton Dill.

The family withheld the announcement until after a ceremony for the Templeton Prize, sponsored by the foundation, which was held Monday in London.

Known as "Jack," Dr. Templeton retired from medicine in 1995 to manage the foundation created in 1987 by his father, Sir John Templeton, the global investor and philanthropist who created the Templeton Fund in 1954.

The elder Templeton, a resident of the Bahamas, sold the family of Templeton Funds to the Franklin Group in 1992 and devoted his fortune to the foundation, based in West Conshohocken. An American-born British subject, he was knighted in 1987.

The John Templeton Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries on "the big questions of human purpose and ultimate reality," according to a statement issued by the foundation. Sir John Templeton believed in the possibility of "acquiring new spiritual information" and at the same time was committed to rigorous scientific research. He died in 2008.

During Dr. Templeton's 20 years at the helm of the foundation as president, and also as chairman after his father's death, its endowment grew from $28 million to $3.34 billion, with 188 grants awarded in 2014, primarily to universities and scholars worldwide.

The foundation is best known for awarding the annual Templeton Prize. Its monetary value of more than a million dollars makes it one of the world's largest annual awards given to an individual.

The 2015 prize was awarded to Jean Vanier, founder of l'Arche, an international network of communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together as peers.

Other recent grants have explored topics such as gratitude, beneficial purpose, exoplanets, and religious liberty.

Under Dr. Templeton, a publishing division called the Templeton Press was added in 1997, with 216 books released to date.

Dr. Templeton was born on Feb. 19, 1940, in New York City, the eldest of three children of John Marks Templeton and Judith Dudley Folk, an advertising executive who died in 1951 during a motorbike accident while on vacation. The loss of his mother when he was just 11 caused Dr. Templeton to strive for improvement in the treatment of traumatic injury once he became a doctor.

He was raised in Englewood, N.J., where his family lived, and spent summers in Winchester, Tenn., the birthplace of his father.

Dr. Templeton graduated from George School in Newtown and received a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in 1962. He was moved to consider a career in medicine during a summer internship in 1960 at a Presbyterian medical mission in Cameroon. Dr. Templeton received his degree from Harvard Medical School in 1968, and completed his internship and residency in surgery at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond in 1973.

During his time at the Medical College of Virginia, he met Josephine "Pina" Gargiulo, who was training to become a pediatric anesthesiologist. They were married in 1970.

He trained in pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia from 1973 to 1975 under surgeon-in-chief C. Everett Koop, who later became U.S. surgeon general.

After two years as a physician in the Navy stationed in Portsmouth, Va., he returned to Children's in 1977, where he served as a pediatric surgeon, director of the trauma program, and, later, as professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Pennsylvania.

After retiring in 1995, he continued to serve as an adjunct professor at the Penn School of Medicine.

During his time at Children's, the institution gained an international reputation for the evaluation and management of patients with conjoined twinning. Dr. Templeton became an expert on surgeries involving conjoined twins under the tutelage of Koop and his successor, James A. O'Neill Jr. Many of those surgeries were undertaken with his wife as lead anesthesiologist.

"We saw many, many things that were very difficult to handle," Josephine Templeton was quoted as saying on the foundation's website. "Every aspect was complex, and Jack had so many difficult cases that the hospital had a dictum: when a very hard case was admitted, we would say, 'That's a Jack patient'."

Templeton was board certified in pediatric surgery and surgical critical care and was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, served as Vice Chairman of the American Trauma Society and was a president of its Pennsylvania division. He served on various boards including the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Foreign Policy Research Institute, American Trauma Society, National Bible Association, and Templeton Growth Fund, Ltd.

He published dozens of papers in medical and professional journals and was the recipient of many awards.

He was a member of Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr since its founding in 1989.

"Jack never lost his compassion, never objectified the patient," said John Schott, a medical school classmate and former trustee of the foundation. "You have to make life and death decisions within a short period of time, and often without enough information.

"That's why medicine is a calling and not just a job. And Jack's seeking nature, his interest in purpose, his grappling with the big questions, all made him a superb doctor and made him the best possible head of the foundation."

"His being a doctor influenced everything," said daughter Jennifer Templeton Simpson, "the way he viewed things, the way he handled problems, the way he asked a lot of questions before he said anything. He never gave up when he didn't have an answer."

Besides his wife and daughters, Dr. Templeton is survived by six grandchildren and a brother.

A visitation is to be held on Wednesday, May 27, from 5 to 7 p.m., at Chadwick & McKinney Funeral Home, 30 E. Athens Ave., Ardmore. A private family funeral service will be held in Winchester, Tenn.

Donations may be made to the American Trauma Society, Pennsylvania Division, 2 Flowers Dr., Mechanicsburg, Pa. 17050.