Roger Penrose

Born 8 August 1931

From Colchester, England, United Kingdom · Nationality: United Kingdom · Writes nonfiction

Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is a British mathematical physicist, mathematician, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

Quotes

“Understanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.”
p. 201
“Do not seek for reasons in the specific patterns of stars, or of other scattered arrangements of objects; look, instead, for a deeper universal order in the way that things behave.”
The Road to Reality, p. 5
“[C]razy ideas are the sort of thing one needs when talking about the Big Bang. ...All the ideas I’m going to show you... are put forward by very... respectable cosmologists. It doesn’t make the ideas any less crazy...”
Penrose Lecture Nov 7, 2005
“The 2nd law of thermodynamics... tells you that randomness increases with time. It’s a sort of depressing law... It depends on how you look at it, really...”
Penrose Lecture Nov 7, 2005

Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Books by Roger Penrose in order

Books by Roger Penrose in the order they were published, from Spinors and Space-Time (1984) to Eschermatics (2023).

If you like Roger Penrose

Authors readers of Roger Penrose often like, from our AI-written notes

Stephen HawkingCo-developed the singularity theorems with Penrose and shared the 1988 Wolf Prize with him. Readers of Penrose often move to Hawking's books on black holes and cosmology.
Douglas HofstadterWrote Gödel, Escher, Bach, which also explores Gödel's theorem, self-reference and whether minds can be explained by formal systems. Readers interested in Penrose's arguments about mind often find it a counterpoint.
David DeutschWrites about quantum theory and the physics of computation, and takes a different view from Penrose on whether quantum physics explains the limits of computing.
Brian GreeneWrites accessible books on space, time and string theory. Readers who want more on the theories Penrose criticises may find him a useful comparison.
Martin GardnerWrote popular books on mathematics, puzzles and science. Penrose's tiling and impossible figures suit readers who enjoy the recreational side of mathematics.