Review: The Impossible Man

 The Impossible Man is a biography of Roger Penrose, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 2020 for his work on black holes in his early career. The author says that the biography took 6 years to write and he had the complete cooperation of Penrose the entire time.

The book describes Penrose's work as being driven entirely by mathematics and his geometrical approach (as opposed to the equation heavy approach of many of his colleagues).  Interesting insights abound, including his fights with his parents about becoming a physicist:

“They accused me of keeping bad company because one of my friends wanted to be a nuclear physicist. They said, ‘Oh, nuclear physics is atom bombs. You’re not allowed to do that. That’s terrible.’ It was horrible.”5 Even for committed pacifists, the leap from enrolling in high school mathematics to facilitating nuclear annihilation was big. Roger wasn’t thinking that many moves ahead. He knew he’d given up one career but hadn’t thought through the alternatives. He certainly had no plans to create weapons of mass destruction. (kindle loc 1099)

The author spends a ton of time on Roger Penrose's personal life, including his difficult relationships with his various wives, children, in contrast with his easy relationship with his colleagues. In many places the author claims that Penrose used his work as an escape from his personal life, and describe him as being so self-centered that he had no idea how his behavior affected those around him, including his family.

Lots of famous people get cameos in this book, including M.C. Escher, Richard Feynman, and Lee Smolin. The saddest part of the book comes at the end, when it's clear that in many ways, Penrose's deliberate contrarian views were no longer persuasive to the greater community, and he searched for ways to validate his work, rather than allowing evidence to guide his work. Of course, that criticism has been leveled at many other than Penrose, but because Penrose had a history of being vindicated he did not swerve or change his attitude.

The subtitle of this book is "the cost of genius." I'm not sure the author fulfilled that thesis. It's not clear that Penrose could only have achieved what he did because he was obtuse about his personal relationships. It's also not clear that his increasing isolation from his family was required or inevitable. It could also have been a result of his belief that free will does not exist.

I enjoyed the book and it made for good reading. I'm not sure the author successfully made his argument but it was a good read anyway!