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The first biography - 'a stunning achievement' (Kai Bird, American Prometheus) - of the dazzling and painful life of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose
When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a "world behind the world" of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world's most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists.
Penrose would prove the limitations of general relativity, set a new agenda for theoretical physics, and astound colleagues and admirers with the elegance and beauty of his discoveries. However, as Patchen Barss documents in The Impossible Man, success came at a price: He was attuned to the secrets of the universe, but struggled to connect with loved ones, especially the women who care for or worked with him.
Both erudite and poetic, The Impossible Man draws on years of research and interviews, as well as previously unopened archives to present a moving portrait of Penrose the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and Roger the human being. It reveals not just the extraordinary life of Roger Penrose, but asks who gets to be a genius, and who makes the sacrifices that allow one man to be one.
When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a "world behind the world" of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world's most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists.
Penrose would prove the limitations of general relativity, set a new agenda for theoretical physics, and astound colleagues and admirers with the elegance and beauty of his discoveries. However, as Patchen Barss documents in The Impossible Man, success came at a price: He was attuned to the secrets of the universe, but struggled to connect with loved ones, especially the women who care for or worked with him.
Both erudite and poetic, The Impossible Man draws on years of research and interviews, as well as previously unopened archives to present a moving portrait of Penrose the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and Roger the human being. It reveals not just the extraordinary life of Roger Penrose, but asks who gets to be a genius, and who makes the sacrifices that allow one man to be one.
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Reviews
"Patchen Barss shows in his beautifully composed and revealing biography The Impossible Man [that] Penrose's exceptional talent for solving the hidden patterns and puzzles in the universe has long contrasted with his struggle to fit into the world of people... Barss, in addition to adeptly explaining complex concepts such as the singularity theorem, makes skilful and sensitive use of Penrose's arc
Financial Times
"A primer to the Penrose understanding of the cosmos, and a remarkable study of the lengths one man has gone to avoid understanding himself."
Daily Telegraph
"This biography depicts Sir Roger in multiple dimensions; only a writer as psychologically astute as Barss could show us an impossible man in full."
New York Times