(Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!)
This post is a review of The Impossible Man, a recent (2024) biography, by the science writer Patchen Barss, of the Nobel prize-winning physicist, mathematician and science popularizer Sir Roger Penrose.
The book, in my opinion, is rather well written. The writing flows, the technical aspects are handled at an acceptable level of popularization, and I did not feel like skipping the text anywhere. Among other things, I like the fact that the book is not too long (300 pages - compare e.g. Alan Turing's bio at 736 pages).
The book begins with a brief but compelling description of a world class intellectual battling the age-related decay of his mental and physical abilities (macular degeneration has made Penrose almost blind; rage against the dying of the light!) and his recent divorce from his wife of thirty years.
Reading on will reveal:
How a sundial (and subsequently a telescope) played a triggering effect in his scientific curiosity just as a magnetic compass did in Einstein's childhood.
How he initially struggled at math in school, but imbibed at home his father's passion for mathematical puzzles.
How his father was not afraid to go against the prevailing intellectual dogma (a trait manifested by Penrose many times in his scientific career) but was also socially gregarious, inviting all kinds of artists, scientists and literary people, who not only came home for dinner but often stayed on for months (!). Young Roger was surely stimulated by this company.
How his childhood rivalries (in math, music, games) with his siblings played a major role in formulating his intellectual strategies and analyses.
How he was stimulated by the radio broadcasts of Fred Hoyle, the popular books of George Gamow, and the art of Maurits Escher. Escher later made drawings based on Penrose's mathematical ideas; their one in-person meeting is described in the book.
That his mature intellectual pursuits were shaped by Dennis Sciama (who was also responsible for introducing him to Stephen Hawking) and lectures from Bondi (general relativity), Dirac (quantum mechanics) and Steen (mathematical logic).
How his defining scientific collaborations with Ted Newman and Wolfgang Rindler emerged organically.
That Penrose was an evaluator of Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis.
That Penrose does not like competition (see 4 above) and avoids hotly contested fields.
Interesting insights like the one Penrose draws from Godel's incompleteness theorem, which says there are truths in any mathematical system which cannot be proved to be true within the rules of that system. Penrose takes that to mean that understanding cannot be fully described using rules, and thus computation cannot fully model human intelligence (seems relevant in the age of AI!).
Why he ended up suing one of the world's biggest toilet paper companies (they used his tiling on their paper, because the tiles were nonperiodic and kept the paper from folding - the case was settled out of court).
How another brush with tile trauma occurred when Daniel Shechtman was awarded the Chemistry Nobel for discovering quasicrystals. The prize ignored Penrose's earlier prediction of the phenomenon. Interestingly, examples predating Penrose's work by centuries exist.
A fascinating two-word 'ambigram' on page 289 which Douglas Hofstadter made and sent to Penrose after the Nobel announcement. Right side up, it reads 'Roger Penrose' upside down, it reads 'Nobel Prize'. Very creative, clever and needless to say, appropriate.
The overall success of the book in conveying the mathematical obsession with geometry that led Penrose to many of his pioneering discoveries.
The contributions as well as conflict introduced by Penrose's relationships with the women in his life vis-a-vis his work. This includes his two failed marriages, the second with a student thirty four years younger than him.
Overall a satisfying read!
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