What started as a race between the government and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter eventually developed into a collaboration. In 2000, Collins and Venter unveiled the completed sequence.
"It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God," Collins said at the time.
Collins resigned as head of the institute last year but remains a consultant. He subsequently established the BioLogos Foundation to "contribute to the public voice that represents the harmony of science and faith."
A self-described agnostic early in his life, his experiences with the dying during his medical practices led him to examine a variety of religions and ultimately to develop a religious philosophy that he enunciated in his 2006 best-seller, "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." But he rejected creationism and intelligent design, arguing that "evolution from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things."
He called his philosophy Theistic Evolution, or BioLogos, and argued that God created the physical parameters of the universe but then allowed it to develop on its own.
Collins was raised on a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and home-schooled by his mother until the sixth grade. His initial interest was in the "pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense," but exposure to a graduate course in biochemistry at Yale University sparked his interest in "this messy thing called life."
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.
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thomas.maugh@latimes.com
