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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Oct. 9, 2001–Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, will present a talk for the general public titled “Science and the Mind” on Friday, Oct. 12, at 8 p.m. in Chapin Hall. His research has contributed to the science of consciousness. The talk will be free and open to the public.
In his 1989 bestseller, “The Emperor’s New Mind,” Penrose used the philosophical arguments of Kant and others to support his claims that artificial intelligence could not duplicate the workings of the human brain and to lend credibility to Einstein’s philosophical doubts about quantum mechanics. Penrose won the 1990 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize for “The Emperor’s New Mind.”
Considered to be among the greatest living mathematicians, Penrose specializes in relativity theory andquantum mechanics. His main research program is to develop the theory of twistors, which he originated over 30 years ago as an attempt to unite Einstein’s general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.
Knighted in 1994 for his outstanding contributions to mathematics, Penrose also has received several major awards including the 1988 Wolf Prize (shared with Stephen Hawking), the Royal Society Royal Medal, the Dirac Medal, and the Albert Einstein Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1972 and a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1998.
A 1996 compilation of lectures by Penrose and Stephen Hawking at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Science at Cambridge University, “The Nature of Space and Time” enabled readers to compare and contrast the two mathematicians’ visions of quantum mechanics and its impact on the evolution of the universe.
Penrose is also the author of “Shadows of the Mind” (1994) and “The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind” (1997).
In addition to his post at Oxford University, Penrose is Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College in London and Francis and Helen Pentz Distinguished Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Penn State University.
Penrose was awarded his B.S. from University College, London and his Ph.D. from St John’s College, Cambridge.
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Published October 9, 2001
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