1. Sunday M. Solomon
April 3, 2012
Fake Wall
Roger Penrose is a famous British Mathematician and Theoretical Physicist. He was
born on August 8, 1931 to the late Lionel and Margaret Penrose in Colchester, Essex,
England. Both of his parents were in the medical field, they sparked his interest in math, they
both shared a common interest in geometry. He had two brothers, Oliver and Jonathan
Penrose. Oliver became a Professor of Mathematics, and Jonathan was the British Chess
Champion 10x’s in a row. In 1939 Penrose and his family came to the United States and
stayed until the end of WWII. Here his father accepted a job at the hospital in London,
Ontario Canada. Roger attended the University College while his father worked in the
hospital. This is where he first started to become interested in math courses. Lionel Penrose
was appointed the Professor of Human Genetics at the University. Because his father was a
faculty member he did not have to pay tuition. He really started to pursue math but his
parents wanted him to follow in their footsteps, in the medical field. The last two years of
college students were allowed to choose the subjects they wanted to study. His first option
was Biology, Mathematics, and Chemistry. There were no options for Biology and Math
courses to be taken at the same time. His second option was Mathematics, Physics, and
Chemistry. He received a B.S. with first class honors in Mathematics. While at Cambridge he
continued to research math. At St. John’s College, he researched algebraic geometry under
the supervision of John Todd.1955 he published “A Generalized Inverse for Matrices”, this
was his first paper. Next he published “A note on Inverse Semi groups. In 1957, he was

2. awarded a Ph.D. for his work on Algebra and Geometry from Cambridge University. In 1959
he married Joan Isabel Wedge and they had three sons together. He is currently married to
Vanessa Thomas and they have one child together. Roger Penrose also attended Princeton
University, Syracuse University, Kings College, Bedford College and the University of
Oxford. Penrose is known for his work on the Penrose Tilings, Pseudoin Inverse, Twistor
Theory and he is most famous for Quasi Crystals and Penrose Stairs. In 1984 he and
Wolfgang Rindler introduced “Twistor Theory”. In 1988 he was awarded the Wolf
Foundation Prize for Physics along with Stephen Hawking. In 1989 he published the
Emperors New Mind which became a best seller. In 1990 he was awarded the Albert Einstein
Medal for outstanding work. In 1996 Penrose and Hawking published the Nature of Space
and Time. The Quasi Crystals are non-periodic and it lacks translational symmetry. Any
finite region in a tiling appears infinitely many times in that tiling and also appears in any
other tiling. A Quasi crystal is revealed. A Penrose tiling will produce a Bragg diffraction-
the diffract gram reveals the fivefold symmetry. This order reflects the fact that the tilings are
organized, according to a process called deflation or inflation.