Wdoctor and allwith all its flaws. This is how you can characterize the recently published biography of Roger Penrose. This 93-year-old English theoretical physicist received the Nobel Prize in 2020 for his theoretical description of the formation of black holes. Together with Stephen Hawking, who took that idea and applied it to the Big Bang, Penrose has become one of the world’s leading cosmologists in recent years.
For five years, the Canadian science journalist Patchen Barss had conversations with him almost weekly and it is to Penrose’s credit that he did not avoid the most painful questions about his past and subsequently gave his biographer complete freedom. Because no matter how brilliant he may have been as a scientist, as a human being he was deeply flawed. That’s how it is The Impossible Man a unique and ruthless, but also moving portrait of an emotionally underdeveloped genius.
That the relationship with and between his parents played an important role in the latter becomes clear in the first half of the book. Only on an intellectual level, for example when his father explains to him the precise workings of a sundial, was there occasionally any form of contact. Father Penrose, professor of genetics, completely ignored his three sons and oppressed his wife psychologically, but perhaps even physically.
It was geometry, the representation of the world in the form of geometric figures, that fascinated son Roger from an early age. It brought him into contact with Escher’s work at an early age, which fascinated and inspired him endlessly. The impossible triangle that forms the basis of Escher’s print Waterfall for example, comes from his brain. He also made major discoveries in the field of (ir)regular surface divisions. But his most important contributions were in the description of the extreme phenomena in the universe and his attempts to connect quantum theory and gravity.
Penrose developed his theories in isolation, withdrawing at home by disappearing through a hole in the floor to a workspace below, not caring about his wife and children. He derived his inspiration from correspondence with a much younger woman with whom, to his own frustration, he did not have a sexual relationship, but who was indispensable as his muse. It is extremely painful to read how he adored her and neglected and vilified his wife – Barss quotes extensively from their many hundreds of letters.
When the relationship ended, he again found a much younger woman who could play that role, but that too would fail. So we meet him in the first pages of the book. Virtually blind, have difficulty walking, forgetful and alone. He collected his Nobel Prize at the Swedish embassy in London. The trip to Stockholm had become impossible for him.