The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius
Patchen Barss follows Roger Penrose from his unconventional childhood in a family of mathematicians and scientists through his work on general relativity, singularities, twistor theory, and consciousness. The book covers the singularity theorems Penrose developed with Stephen Hawking, his later collaboration with Hawking on black holes, his geometric tilings, and his contested ideas about quantum mechanics and the mind. Barss also draws on extensive interviews with Penrose, his family, and colleagues to examine the personal pattern that ran alongside the scientific work, including strained marriages, distant relationships with his children, and a lifelong tendency to retreat into mathematics. The biography reaches the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics that recognized his singularity work. Barss treats genius as a real cost on the people around it as well as on the person who carries it.
What you might want to know about The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A biography of the mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose that traces both his scientific achievements and the personal price they carried.
Yes. Cowen included it on his Best Non-Fiction of 2024 list on Marginal Revolution as one of the year's notable biographies.
Some background helps for the chapters on general relativity and twistor theory, but Barss is a science journalist and explains the key ideas for general readers.
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius was written by Patchen Barss, published in 2024 by Basic Books.
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.