The new Roger Penrose biography

 [[{“value”:”The author is Patchen Barss, and the title is The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius.  I liked this book very much, and feel there should be more works like this.  It was made with the full cooperation of Penrose himself, though he had no veto over the final work.  Here is
The post The new Roger Penrose biography appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]] 

The author is Patchen Barss, and the title is The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius.  I liked this book very much, and feel there should be more works like this.  It was made with the full cooperation of Penrose himself, though he had no veto over the final work.  Here is one bit:

Many relativists had a powerful feel for formal math: errors in calculations leapt out at them the way off-key notes rankle a musician’s ear.  Not Roger.  Equations required too much mental labour and restricted his creativity.  His “magic” came from the shape of things.  He preferred to run his fingers along the curves and twists of space and time and find in those graceful lines the story of how every particle, force, and phenomenon acquired its properties.

The book covers Penrose’s personal life as well:

Judith encouraged him to sort out his relationship with Joan independently of his feelings for her.  He wasn’t sure that made sense.  In a deterministic universe, could he really take ownership of his unhappy marriage?  The idea felt strange to him.

Returning to physics:

Roger’s curiosity about consciousness came from many places — the extreme mental feats of his father and brothers, the speed of decision making in racquet sports, the human ability to transcend Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and his own capacity to discover new mathematical insights.

Then again, one might return to matters of his personal life:

…he [Penrose] offhandedly observed how many scientists — not just him — seem to have “troubled marriages.”  He implied that a solitary life might be an inevitable consequence, a necessary price, for his kind of success.  True, Wolfgang and Ted [friends] had long, happy marriages.  Then again, neither of them had won a Nobel Prize.

His tone was one of justification rather than regret.  He didn’t see how it could be any other way.

Recommended.  Here is a good NYT review.

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 Books, Philosophy, Science, Uncategorized 


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