Penrose, Roger 1931-

(Sir Roger Penrose)

PERSONAL: Born August 8, 1931, in Colchester, Essex, England; son of Lionel Sharples Penrose (a geneticist) and Margaret Newman (a doctor); married Joan Isabel Wedge, 1958 (divorced, 1980); married Vanessa Dee Thomas, April 19, 1988; children: (first marriage) Christopher Shaun, Toby Nicholas, Eric Alexander, (second marriage) Maxwell Sebeastian. Education: University College, London, B.S., 1952; St. John’s College, Cambridge, Ph.D., 1957; Warsaw University, Ph.D. 2005; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Ph.D., 2005. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, puzzles, miniature stone carving, piano.

ADDRESSES: Office—Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, Pennsylvania State University, 104 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802-6300; Oxford University, Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St. Giles, Oxford OX1 3LB, England.

CAREER: Mathematician, physicist, researcher, educator, and writer. National Research Development Corp., London, England, mathematician, 1956, consultant, 1956-57; Bedford College, London, assistant lecturer in mathematics, 1956-57; St. John’s College, Cambridge, England, research fellow, 1957-60; North American Trade Organization (NATO) research fellow at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, and Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1959-61; King’s College, London, research associate in mathematics department, 1961-63; Birkbeck College, London, reader in applied mathematics, 1964-66, professor of applied mathematics, 1966-73; Oxford University, Oxford, England, Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, 1973—; Rice University, Edgar Odell Lovett Professor of Mathematics, 1982-87. Visiting associate professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Texas, Austin, 1963-64; visiting professor at Yeshiva University, Princeton University, and Cornell University; lecturer at Battelle Institute, 1966-67 and 1969; Syracuse University, visiting distinguished professor of physics and mathematics, 1987—; London Mathematical Society and New Zealand Mathematical Society, Forder Lecturer, 1992-93.

MEMBER: International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (president, 1992-95), Royal Society (fellow, beginning in 1972; council member, 1980-82), Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications (council member, 1982-85), London Mathematical Society (council member, 1983-87), Cambridge Philosophical Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Adams Prize, Cambridge University, 1966; Dannie Heineman Prize, American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics, 1971; Eddington Medal, Royal Astronomical Society, and prize from Gravity Research Foundation (both with Stephen W. Hawking), 1975; fellow, University College, London, 1975; Miller Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, 1978; Royal Medal, Royal Society, 1985; honorary fellow, St. John’s College, Cambridge, 1987; Wolf Foundation Prize (with Hawking), 1988; Dirac Medal and Prize, Institute of Physics, 1989; Albert Einstein Medal, Albert Einstein Gesellschaft, 1990; Science Book Prize, Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, 1990; Naylor Prize, London Mathematical Society, 1991; knighthood for services to science, 1994; De Morgan medal, 2004, Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, 2006, “for the discovery of Penrose tilings, which have captured the public’s imagination, and for an extraordinary series of books that brought the subject of consciousness to the public in mathematical terms.” Also numerous honorary degrees, including degrees from the University of New Brunswick, 1992; University of Surrey, 1993; University of Bath, 1994; University of London, 1995; University of Glasgow, 1996; University of Essex, 1996; University of St Andrews, 1997; University of Santiniketan India, 1998; Open University, 1998; University of Southampton, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Techniques of Differential Topology in Relativity, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (Philadelphia, PA), 1972.

(Editor, with C.J. Isham and D.W. Sciama) Quantum Gravity, two volumes, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1975 and 1981.

(With Wolfgang Rindler) Spinors and Space-Time, Volume 1: Two-Spinor Calculus and Relativistic Fields, Volume 2: Spinor and Twistor Methods in Space-Time Geometry, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor, with H.S.M. Coxeter, M. Emmer, and M.L. Teuber) M.C. Escher, Art and Science, North Holland (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor, with Isham) Quantum Concepts in Space and Time, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Stephen Hawking) The Nature of Space and Time, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1996.

(With Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Stephen Hawking) The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, edited by Malcolm Longair, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Brian Aldiss) White Mars; or, The Mind Set Free, a 21st-Century Utopia, St. Martin’s Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, Knopf (New York, NY), 2005.

(With T.D. Singh) Science, Spirituality, and the Nature of Reality: A Discussion between Roger Penrose and T.D. Singh, Bhaktivedanta Institute (Calcutta, India), 2005.

Contributor of numerous articles to scientific journals.

SIDELIGHTS: In his career as a mathematician and physicist, Roger Penrose has taken on several of the mysteries that still challenge these two disciplines and, in so doing, has succeeded in making significant contributions to the scientific understanding of the universe. His development of mathematical theorems and methods in the areas of conic sections, tensor calculus, spinor calculus, and twistor geometry have provided valuable tools for use in complex proofs and in the investigation of space and time.

Penrose has also achieved a great deal of notoriety in the area of recreational mathematics, puzzles, and games. In the late 1950s, he and his father, the geneticist Lionel S. Penrose, discovered the illusion now known as the Penrose Staircase. This two-dimensional representation of an impossible three-dimensional object involves a staircase that rises, makes right-angle turns, and returns to its starting point, suggesting an endless loop. The best-known examples of this illusion have been created by twentieth-century Dutch artist M.C. Escher in his lithographs Ascending and Descending and Waterfall. Another of Penrose’s playful applications of mathematics comes in tiling a plane. Tiling a floor using equilateral triangles, squares, or regular hexagons is easily accomplished. Doing so with regular pentagons is far more complicated. Penrose has discovered some interesting ways to tile a floor using pentagons in non-repeating patterns. The seemingly unnatural symmetry of Penrose’s solutions has now been discovered in the quasi-crystals of some metal alloys.

Penrose has applied his expertise in mathematics to the realm of physics in an attempt to extend Einstein’s general theory of relativity to more fully describe the properties of our universe. In 1965, he demonstrated that a collapsing star of sufficient mass would shrink to a point of zero volume and infinite density—a singularity; this was one of the first steps toward describing the nature of black holes. Five years later he collaborated with the theoretical physicist Stephen W. Hawking on a paper that extended these singularity theorems to sup-port views that the universe had originated from a singularity in a big bang. Since then, Penrose has continued to apply his skills to describing the properties of black holes and the universe’s original big bang.

Penrose subsequently turned his attention to two issues. The first issue is the attempt by physicists to come up with a quantum theory of gravity; such a theory would represent a unified theory, reconciling the inconsistencies between the general theory of relativity, which describes the interactions of celestial bodies on a large scale, and quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of subatomic particles on an extremely small scale. The second issue is the attempt by computer scientists to create thinking machines with artificial intelligence. Penrose weaves together his experience in mathematics and physics, his insights into quantum gravity, and his evaluation of artificial intelligence in his first book written for a general audience— Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics.

Well before the twentieth century, mathematicians and inventors pursued machines that could perform tasks associated with human intelligence. Seventeenth-century French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal’s adding machine and nineteenth-century English mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage’s analytical engine were two of the early steps in this process. Contemporary electronic digital computers are the descendants of these machines. In recent years, these electronic machines have grown in sophistication, performing number crunching, optical character recognition, and voice recognition, and impersonating a therapist or grand master at chess. Yet, given this progress, is it arguable that computers are able to think? Will they one day achieve an intelligence and consciousness similar to those of humans? These questions are at the heart of the debate on artificial intelligence and of The Emperor’s New Mind.

The proponents of strong artificial intelligence (Al) believe that the brain is nothing more than a very powerful biological computer employing extremely complex algorithms. Once the algorithms of the brain are approximated and programmed into an electronic computer, these scientists claim it will be able to pass the Turing Test, first proposed by the British computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. The test involves a human interviewer, a human subject, and a computer subject; all are able to communicate with one another but isolated from view. If, after asking each subject a number of questions, the interviewer is unable to determine which subject is human and which is machine, then the computer will have demonstrated intelligence. The developers of expert systems believe they have already achieved intelligence in focused disciplines. With technological advances and more sophisticated algorithms, the proponents of strong Al believe computers will achieve human intelligence and consciousness. They will have minds.

Penrose disagrees and lays out his opposing viewpoint in The Emperor’s New Mind. His argument is quite involved, including discussions of algorithms, Turing machines, fractal geometry, Goedel’s Theorem, complexity theory, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, quantum mechanics, cosmology, brain anatomy, computers, and the mind. As a contributor to the Economist wrote: “Universal Turing machines are capable of doing any mathematical calculation that is amenable to the application of rules. But mathematical truths can be found which are unreachable by the application of such rules. Stripped of numerous subtleties, Mr. Penrose’s view is that if people can do things that Turing machines cannot, computers will have a hard time becoming people.” Rudy Rucker noted in the Washington Post Book World that Penrose “proposes instead that the phenomenon of consciousness is a product of physical processes entirely outside the known laws of classical physics.” Rucker went on to write that “Penrose’s shocking thesis is that when we think, our brains take advantage of quantum mechanics to split into millions of parallel brains, all thinking slightly different thoughts at once!” For this reason, Rucker continued, “you can… consider an almost unlimited number of possibilities in the time it would take an ordinary computer to examine one. Somehow the mathematical structure underlying physics ensures that the most…. beautiful patterns receive a preferred weighting, and it will be one of them which suddenly emerges as a spontaneous flash of insight.”

Times Literary Supplement contributor Daniel C. Dennett found Penrose’s book “a pedagogical tour de force, with some dazzling new ways of illuminating the central themes of science.” Dennett added that the author’s “exemplary candour, particularly in the chapters on cosmology and quantum physics, provides the uninitiated reader with a vivid experience of the way gut intuitions and aesthetic reactions call the tune in science until someone figures out a conversation-stopping proof, mathematical or experimental.”And, as Timothy Ferris commented in the New York Times Book Review: “The Emperor’s New Mind ranks among the most innovative and exciting science books to have been published in the last 40 years.” Ferris also wrote in the same review: “Those who take the trouble to master it will be rewarded with a new perspective on the scientific landscape, and a visionary glimpse of the possible future of science.”

In Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Penrose devotes the first part of the book to answering criticisms of his argument in The Emperor’s New Mind, that human consciousness cannot be matched by even the most sophisticated computations of artificial intelligence. “Human intuition and insight cannot be reduced to any set of rules,” the author states; in other words, the brain is not “a computer made of meat.” The major tenets of his argument here rest on Kurt Godel’s 1931 formulation that, in Penrose’s words, “no formal system of sound mathematical rules can ever suffice, even in principle, to establish all the true propositions of ordinary arithmetic,” and John Lucas’s interpretation of Godel’s work, which “implie[d] that human intelligence cannot be simulated by a computer.” In the second part of the book, Penrose conjectures about what kind of changes in current understandings of physics and neurobiology would be necessary to adequately represent the noncomputational dynamics of the human mind. He proposes that if quantum mechanics (which generally describes microsystems) could be wedded with the theory of general relativity (which relates to gravitational laws), we could apprehend the activities that take place in the sub-cellular microtubules of our brains. In the words of Adam Schulman, who reviewed the book for Commentary, “wwe are asked to believe that, while we think, deep inside the microtubules of our brain cells, at the borderline between gravity and quantum physics, there are large-scale nonlocally entangled quantum-coherent oscillations collapsing—and in a genuinely noncomputable manner to boot!”

As the exclamation point at the end of Schulman’s sentence illustrates, Shadows of the Mind did little to quell the controversy engendered by the The Emperor’s New Mind; instead, Penrose’s attempts to clarify his use of Godel’s theorem through reference to Lucas’s work brought forth even greater critical questioning than some of his original arguments. In the New York Times Book Review, Hilary Putnam wrote that, in using Lucas’s arguments, Penrose “mistakenly believes that he has a philosophical disagreement with the logical community, when in fact this is a straightforward case of mathematical fallacy.” Schulman stated, “We are left with the impression that Penrose has trouble even conceiving of something noncomputable. To do so, he might have to be willing to open his mind to aspects of human experience other than the mathematical.” Frank Wilczek, who reviewed the book for Science, wrote that while many readers who worked through the book would benefit from the exercise, he was little convinced by its claims: “Penrose’s argument, from formal logic and philosophy, that human beings perform noncomputable operations is simply mistaken;… his argumen that quantum theory is incomplete is unconvincing and his proposed remedy implausible;… his conclusion than an essentially classical description of microtubule function must fail is premature to say the least; and… his discussion of this topic, and of neurobiology in general, does not do justice to a large important body of relevant empirical knowledge.” Other reviewers, however, praised the new work both in style and content. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who reviewed it for the New York Times, wrote that “you feel even when [Penrose] is most obscurely technical that you are grasping what is important about his argument.” The critic went on to write in the same review: “Thanks to the forceful reasoning of Shadows of the Mind, Mr. Penrose reveals several worlds that are normally very hard to see but that thanks to his guidance are thrilling to imagine.”

In 1996, Princeton University Press brought out The Nature of Space and Time, a collaborative effort from Penrose and Stephen Hawking. Described by the publishers as a “debate” between Penrose and Hawking, the book alternates chapters by each which are based on a series of public lectures they gave in 1994. According to Robert M. Wald, who reviewed the book for Science, “although they make some criticisms of each other’s views as well as some criticisms of other alternative approaches… there is relatively little direct engagement at a deep level between them in the book.” The main subject of the lectures relates to Penrose’s earlier works in that it works toward a formulation of the relationship between quantum physics and gravitational theory. “One question, for example, is whether parameters in a quantum description of matter can have definite (‘real’) values before they are measured,” stated a Publishers Weekly contributor. Wald concluded that “this is an interesting book to read now, but it promises to become an even more interesting book for future generations of physicists, after it becomes more clear which present-day ideas lie on the path toward the development of a quantum theory of gravity.”

For The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Penrose collaborates with Hawking, Abner Shimony (Boston University professor emeritus of philosophy and physics), and Nancy Cartwright (director of the London School of Economics center for the philosophy of the natural and social sciences). Here again, general relativity, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence are the chief subjects, along with a discussion of mathematics as a separate reality whose excellence is proved by its “accuracy as a description of [human] reality” as noted by a Publishers Weekly contributor. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly also commented that “despite the many heady and humorous diagrams and illustrations and the crystal clear prose, the enormous complexity of the thesis presents formidable obstacles to the lay reader.”

Penrose experiments with a new genre in his collaboration with science fiction and fantasy author Brian W. Aldiss; together they wrote White Mars; or, The Mind Set Free, a 21st-Century Utopia. The book’s premise reveals Penrose’s influence: set on Mars in the middle of the twenty-first century, a scientific colony searches for the Omega Smudge, a “persistently elusive quantum entity that, once detected, will reveal the secrets of gravity and, possibly, human consciousness itself,” commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor. However, soon this colony, and groups of workers vacationing on Mars, are completely cut off from Earth after Earth’s economic structure breaks down. Now, the six thousand Mars inhabitants must decide how they are going to run their planet. Tom Jeffries, a scientist turned philosopher, mediates their discussions of topics from labor and compensation to crime and punishment, and from sex and the family to education and religion. While agreements are reached and gains are made, the populace remains threatened by internal dissent and violence and mysterious external forces. A Kirkus Reviews contributor summed the novel up as a “polemic” which was not a “gripping” novel, “but engrossing and provocative nonetheless.”

In his 2005 book, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, Penrose examines how the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics have altered our vision of the cosmos and provided amazingly accurate models of how the universe operates. The author explores Einstein’s general theory of relativity as a solid foundation for our understanding of the universe and delves into how improvements still need to be made in quantum theory to improve our understanding. “It is certainly an important book,” wrote Mike Alder in Quadrant, adding: “A recurring theme is the importance which mathematics has for making sense of reality.” Many reviewers, including Alder, have noted that The Road to Reality is not a simple book to read or one that would appear to be understood easily by the general public. The book has surprised many, however, by selling more than 55,000 copies in hardback. “The success of Roger Penrose’s book The Road to Reality… has raised many eyebrows in the publishing world.” commented Ben Cook in Bookseller.” Despite being laden with complex mathematical equations, and weighing in at more than 1,100 pages, sales of Penrose’s account of the physical universe have surpassed expectations and have resulted in the tome being tagged, somewhat surprisingly, a ‘popular science’ book.” Elizabeth Brown, writing in the Library Journal, noted that the book contains both simple and complex math exercises that allow readers “to choose how deeply to read and analyze material.” A Newsweek contributor wrote that “the book is being hailed as a masterpiece, and parts of it…. are eloquent and comprehensible.”

As the author discusses mathematics and physics as our basis for understanding the universe, he also explores various issues and controversies, such as the big bang and black holes. In addition, he ruminates on what the science of physics might look like in the future and discusses how scientific intuition can lead to revolution in scientific thought. “The Road to Reality loops through a luxurious landscape suffused with the beauty, magic, and mystery of Being,” wrote Martin Gardner in the New Criterion. Jaron Lanier wrote in the American Scientist that the author “presents us with a cosmic, romantic sense of human history fused with his technical autobiography,” adding: “To him, the great adventure of history is the quest to understand what is going on in this weird reality we find ourselves in, and his personal story is that same quest in miniature.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Hawking, Stephen W., A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Penrose, Roger, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Scientists: Their Lives and Works, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2008.

World of Physics, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2008.

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, September 1, 2005, Jaron Lanier, “The Whole Megillah,” review of The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, p. 459.

Bookseller, March 3, 2006, Ben Cook, “Life, the Universe and Everything: In a Climate of Celebrity Publishing and Dumbing Down, Is There Still a Place for ‘Boffin Lit’?,” review of The Road to Reality, p. 26.

Commentary, April, 1995, Adam Schulman, review of Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, pp. 66-69.

Discover, June, 2005, Tim Folger, “If an Electron Can Be in 2 Places at Once, Why Can’t You? Electrons Do It. Photons Do It. Physics Legend Roger Penrose Thinks He Finally Knows Why You and I Can’t Do It Too,” p. 28.

Economist, September 17, 1988, “Many-Sided Penrose,” p. 100; October 14, 1989, review of the The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, p. 103.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2000, review of White Mars; or, The Mind Set Free, a 21st-Century Utopia, p. 216.

Library Journal, February 15, 2005, Elizabeth Brown, review of The Road to Reality, p. 154.

New Criterion, October, 2004, Martin Gardner, “Theory of Everything,” p. 65.

Newsweek, November 8, 2004, “Physics: Dose of ‘Reality,’” review of The Road to Reality, p. 13.

New York Times, October 31, 1994, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Shadows of the Mind, p. B2.

New York Times Book Review, November 19, 1989, George Johnson, “In the Phantom Zone,” profile of author, p. 3; November 19, 1989, Timothy Ferris, review of The Emperor’s New Mind, p. 3; November 20, 1994, Hilary Putnam, review of Shadows of the Mind, p. 7; February 27, 2005, George Johnson, “A Really Long History of Time,” p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, January 15, 1996, review of The Nature of Space and Time, p. 456; March 10, 1997, review of The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, p. 59; February 14, 2000, review of White Mars, p. 177; January 31, 2005, review of The Road to Reality, p. 62.

Quadrant, October, 2007, Mike Alder, “A World of Complications,” review of The Road to Reality, p. 86.

Science, June 21, 1985, review of Spinors and Space-Time, p. 1422; December 9, 1994, Frank Wilczek, review of Shadows of the Mind, pp. 1737-1739; June 7, 1996, Robert M. Wald, review of The Nature of Space and Time, p. 1445.

Skeptic, spring, 2005, Michael Shermer, “The Key to the Universe” review of The Road to Reality, p. 78.

Times Literary Supplement, September 29, 1989, Daniel C. Dennett, review of The Emperor’s New Mind, pp. 1055-1056.

Washington Post Book World, January 21, 1990, Rudy Rucker, review of The Emperor’s New Mind.*