In his early 20s, John Haught started reading the works of the Jesuit priest and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As an undergraduate student at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Haught had majored in philosophy and completed graduate work in philosophical theology, though he was never ordained. While teaching science and religion at Georgetown University and writing books on the topic, he specialized in the areas of cosmology and biology. During his studies, he concluded that Thomistic metaphysics could not adequately contextualize the discoveries of evolutionary biology and Big Bang physics. As the intellectual backbone of his courses, he turned to science-friendly 20th century philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead, Michael Polanyi, Bernard Lonergan, and Hans Jonas. His books "Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation" (1995) and more recently "Science and Faith: a New Introduction" (2012) reflect an approach developed over many years of teaching at Georgetown University.