NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — John Templeton, an investor and mutual fund pioneer who dedicated much of his fortune to promoting religion and reconciling it with science, has died. He was 95.

Templeton died yesterday from pneumonia at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas, said his spokesman Donald Lehr.

Templeton created the $1.4 million 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 Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Templeton was born in Tennessee and later moved to Nassau and became a naturalised British citizen.

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", Lehr said.