“In this elegant biography, Barss vividly evokes Penrose’s geometric sensibility and his quest to prove that a geometrically perfect world lies hidden behind everyday reality.”
News & Reviews
The Needy Genius Who Understood the Cosmos (People, Not So Much)
By Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
November 13, 2024
“Space-time is out there,” a young Penrose told one of his teachers. “And I am exploring it with my life.” Barss sees the beauty in this notion while also registering Penrose’s habit of invoking the universe to escape accountability. This biography depicts Sir Roger in multiple dimensions; only a writer as psychologically astute as Barss could show us an impossible man in full.”
‘The Impossible Man’ Review: When Life Just Doesn’t Add Up
By Julian Baggini
“Mr. Penrose, it is clear, has a mind fit for physics, not for the messy world of human relations. He has struggled to understand how his relationship problems could be more difficult to solve than his scientific ones, treating the former as though they were as tractable and logical as the latter. As a biographer, Mr. Barss is willing to let his subject’s contradictions lie. Life, he notes, isn’t like some of Mr. Penrose’s geometric puzzles: “The moment never comes when the last piece clicks into place and the puzzle is complete.”
What is the price of genius, asks biography of Roger Penrose
By Chelsea Whyte
Many people still believe (and many scientists tell themselves) that genius is a solitary affair, that what they do is so important it merits exemption from everyday life and the obligations of intimate relationships.As his subtitle suggests, Patchen Barss doesn’t endorse this notion in The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the cost of genius, as he charts the life of one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century.
The Impossible Man — the heavy price of life as a physics genius
by Anjana Abuja
“As Toronto-based science journalist Patchen Barss shows in his beautifully composed and revealing biography The Impossible Man, Penrose’s exceptional talent for solving the hidden patterns and puzzles in the universe has long contrasted with his struggle to fit into the world of people.”
Superb insights into a flawed genius
One of the greatest physicists and mathematicians of the past century receives his first biography. (starred review)
Science journalist Barss, author of Flow Spin Flow: Looking for Patterns in Nature, does a fine job with a difficult subject. Penrose, now 93, did not win his Nobel Prize until 2020. Few deny his genius, but explanations of his groundbreaking discoveries are, like Stephen Hawking’s, likely to baffle a lay audience and were no snap for his colleagues. His Ph.D. advisors, world-class mathematicians, acclaimed his thesis but found it “by no means light reading.” Einstein’s relativity, which illuminated space, time, and gravity, is easier to explain. Penrose discovered the limitations of relativity but also simplified many of its complex equations. Ironically for a mathematician, Penrose disliked equations, preferring to view the cosmos visually. This fascination with geometry has made his name best known for a few dazzling optical illusions such as the Penrose triangle and Penrose staircase. Penrose’s genius was no secret. He was showered with honors, lectured, traveled the world, and enjoyed collaboration and quarrels with fellow scientists. His personal life was less satisfactory, although Barss has a much easier time explaining it. His brilliant but distant father encouraged a fascination with science and puzzles but seems to have left his son emotionally challenged. A popular speaker, Penrose had no trouble dealing with fellow scientists but seemed unable to handle intimate relationships. Intensely attracted to energetic, accomplished women, often fellow mathematicians, he married two but carried on long relationships with others whom he openly referred to as his “muses,” preferring to pepper them with his papers and solicit feedback, behavior they found both flattering and creepy. Readers may incline toward creepy.Superb insights into a flawed genius.
Publishers Weekly review
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius (starred review) Patchen Barss. Basic, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-1-5416-0366-0 Science journalist Barss (The Erotic Engine) presents a penetrating, warts and all biography of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose. A socially awkward kid from an unaffectionate family, Penrose had a meager social life that he compensated […]