Francisco José Ayala

Spanish American Biologist; concerned with man's moral behavior, accepts Charles Darwin view that higher intelligence leads to ethical judgment. Prof. Ayala from the University of California, at Irvine, recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Difference of Being Human, where you can read his views on this issue. He mentions that Prof. Pinker from MIT, considers this the closest thing to the meaning of life.

Ayala's concerns with ethics come, I suppose, from his prior life as a Catholic Priest. Now he is married, and has children, and follows the tradition of European thinkers with a religious background, like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Goerges Lemaître.
Other giant with a similar upbringing was Ivan Illich.