Sir John Templeton

The man Money magazine described as "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century" created the £820,000 Templeton Prize, billed as the world's richest annual prize, to honour advancement in knowledge of spiritual matters. Winners have included Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1978, the prize went to the Edinburgh-educated Tom Torrance; nine years later it was won by the Rev Lord MacLeod of Fuinary.

Templeton wanted the monetary value to surpass that of the Nobel Prize, to show that advances in spiritual fields were just as important. Next year's award is expected to be almost £1m. Paraphrasing the Parable of the Talents, he was fond of saying: "The more we give away, the more we have left."

Templeton was born in Tennessee, graduated from Yale University and became a Rhodes scholar, earning a master's degree in law at Balliol College, Oxford. He launched his Wall Street career in 1937 and was considered a pioneer in foreign investment, choosing companies and nations that were foundering or at points of what he called "maximum pessimism".

In 1939, he borrowed money to buy 100 shares each in 104 companies selling at $1 per share or less, including 34 companies that were in bankruptcy. Only four turned out to be worthless, and Templeton turned large profits on the others.

In 1954, he established Templeton Growth Fund, which he sold in 1992 to the Franklin Group for $440m. From its foundation it grew at almost 16% a year, making it the top-performing growth fund in the second half of the twentieth century. By 2007, the Franklin Templeton business was managing £282bn worldwide, including £15bn from its European headquarters in Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh link goes further, as Sandy Nairn, chief executive of the investment boutique Edinburgh Partners, first made his mark on the financial world working for Templeton. When Nairn set up Edinburgh Partners, Templeton gave him a ringing endorsement.

Nairn said: "He was a completely unique individual. He wasn't motivated by what you could call hedge fund greed'. For him it was about making money to make people's lives better. He was always interested in what people had to say and was one of the gentlest people you could come across.

"He was incredibly open- minded, and had great humility and patience. He saw the world with a great clarity and everything was very simple to him."

Urbane and always immaculately dressed, Templeton continued to work 60-hour weeks until he was well into his eighties. He was influenced by the Unity School of Christianity, which takes a non-literal view of heaven and hell, and he often started his mutual fund's annual meetings with a prayer. The philanthropist also was a member of the Presbyterian Church and a board member of the Princeton Theological Seminary.

In 1987, he established the John Templeton Foundation to fund projects that could reconcile religion and science. The Pennsylvania-based organisation has an estimated endowment of $1.5bn and awards some $70m annually. Grants have been awarded to studies ranging from evolutionary biology and cosmology to love and forgiveness.

Templeton wrote and edited a dozen books, including an anthology of aphorisms. He developed a cult following among fund managers and, even after he retired, his observations could move stock markets.

Templeton was knighted in 1987 for his philanthropic accomplishments. He moved from New York to Nassau, in the Bahamas, more than 40 years ago and took British citizenship.

In 1950, his first wife, Judith, whom he married in 1937, died in a cycling accident, leaving him to bring up their three young children. In 1958, he married Irene Butler, who died in 1993. He died in Nassau and is survived by two sons, a stepdaughter, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His daughter, Ann, died in 2004.