As a little boy, Roger Penrose and his father discovered a sundial in a clearing behind their home. In that machine made of light, shadow, and time, six-year-old Roger discovered a "world behind the world" of transcendently beautiful geometry, beginning a journey toward becoming one of the world's most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists. In the years to come, Penrose earned a Nobel Prize, a knighthood, and dozens of other prestigious honors. He proved the limitations of general relativity, and he set a new agenda for theoretical physics. However, success came at a price. Penrose's longing for knowledge was matched only by his inability to understand those around him, and he struggled to connect with friends, family, and especially the women in his life. His final years have been spent alone with his research, intentionally cut off from the people who loved him.
A moving and intimate portrait of a figure who has expanded our understanding of the universe ... Evocative ... Barss elegantly conveys the thrill of discovery ... This biography depicts Sir Roger in multiple dimensions; only a writer as psychologically astute as Barss could show us an impossible man in full.
Absorbing ... Many of the ideas are so arcane, and the descriptions so brief, that only the most careful of readers will come away feeling enlightened. The focus of The Impossible Man is the life of an extraordinary mind, not its products.
The book is essentially about a human caught between clock time and time in the fourth dimension ... A primer to the Penrose understanding of the cosmos, and a remarkable study of the lengths one man has gone to avoid understanding himself.
