Francisco Jose Ayala Pereda is a Spanish-American evolutionary biologist and philosopher at the University of California, Irvine. He was born on March 12, 1934 in Madrid, Spain. He received a B.S. in physics from the University of Madrid in 1955. Between 1955 and 1960, he studied theology at the Pontifical Faculty of San Esteban in Salamanca, where he was ordained a priest in the Dominican order in 1960. He left the priesthood the same year. Ayala was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, serving as chair of its board of directors between 1993 and 1996. He was also an adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Among his many honours for his scientific contributions, Ayala was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2002 and the Templeton Prize in 2010.