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Roger Penrose

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Mathematician

The Resume

    (August 8, 1931- )
    Born in Colchester, England, United Kingdom
    Created the Penrose triangle and Penrose tiling
    With astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, developed much of the mathematics describing the behavior of gravitational singularities, aka black holes
    He and Hawking were co-recipients of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Eddington Medal (1965) and the Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics (1988)
    Wrote ‘The Emperor’s New Mind’ (1989), ‘The Nature of Space and Time’ (with Hawking, 1996), ‘The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe’ (2004), ‘Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe’ (2010) and ‘Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe’ (2016)
    Knighted for services to science (1994)

Why he might be annoying:

    Unlike the myth about Albert Einstein, he really did do badly in math as a child.
    When computer expert Roger Schlafly took out a patent on two extremely large prime numbers, Penrose commented, ‘It’s absurd. Mathematics is out there for everybody.’
    Two years later, he threatened to sue Kimberly-Clark for copyright violation for marketing rolls of Kleenex Quilted toilet paper with designs based on Penrose tiling (1997).
    His invocation of quantum mechanics in an attempt to restore the Cartesian separation of mind and matter in ‘The Emperor’s New Mind’ was dismissed by ‘Sciences’ magazine: ‘What seems at first a daunting piece of intellectual architecture turns out to be a teetering superstructure built atop a gut-level feeling that there simply cannot be a computer running inside Roger Penrose’s head.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    The Penrose triangle inspired M.C. Escher’s ‘Waterfall,’ in which water at the base of a waterfall seemingly runs down uphill to return to the top of the waterfall.
    He has been called the most important contributor to Relativity Theory since Einstein.
    His books are best sellers, prompting ‘New Scientist’ to note, ‘Despite being impossibly successful in academia, Penrose seems to have the common touch.’
    He keeps toys in his office, commenting ‘Science and fun cannot be separated.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 66 Votes: 42.42% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying