Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

This article is about the 3rd most famous person buried in Hyde Park, NY. Well…. not so easy after you get past Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt is it?

A French philosopher--don't let your eyes glaze over he really had an interesting life; Author of almost 20 books, many of them translated into over a dozen languages; A world renowned paleontologist who was directly involved with one of that field's major historic finds; In that responsibility he was also caught up in one of its greatest hoaxes. All that and he is buried on the ground of the Culinary Institute of America (C.I.A.) in Historic Hyde Park.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit Priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Born in 1881 into a family of wealthy landowners with ties to the painter Chardin and to the philosopher Voltaire. Teilhard joined the Jesuits in 1899.

He was ordained a priest in 1911, and served as a stretcher-bearer in the trenches with the French Army from 1914 to 1918.�

After receiving his PhD in Geology, he was assigned to do work in the then infant field of paleontology, in China. His work related to the discover and dating of fossils brought him professional fame for his labors in analyzing the remains of Sinanthropus or "Peking Man."

These artifacts were first discovered in 1923 during excavations near Beijing (Peking), China. Contiguous finds of animal remains and evidence of fire and tool use were used to support concept that Homo erectus was the first tool-worker. The analysis led to the conclusion that the fossils were examples of the same broad stage of human evolution.�

PHILOSOPHY

Teilhard tried to find common ground between science (primarily evolution) and religion. Like many men and women, throughout history, he found it very...