biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1931– )
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| biography:
| Mathematical physicist, born in Colchester, Essex, SE England, UK. He studied at University College London, and Cambridge. From 1956 he held posts at several British and American universities before taking an appointment at Birkbeck College, London, in 1964. In 1973 he became Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. His research interests span topology and gravitation. In 1965 he showed that Einstein's general relativity predicts that stars can collapse under their own weight to form black holes. Subsequently, he and Hawking showed that general relativity predicts a ‘big bang’ creation of the universe (1970). He invented twistors, geometrical entities that can be used to describe space-time. The Penrose triangle is an impossible figure that inspired M(aurits) C(ornelius) Escher's ‘Ascending and descending’. His publications include The Emperor's New Mind (1989) and Shadows of the Mind (1994). He was knighted in 1994. |
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