When did you know it was Maths? - Roger Penrose

Today is Roger Penrose's 92nd birthday.
To celebrate, here is his contribution to our 'When did you know it was Maths?' films in which he explains how he was very nearly lost to medicine.
You can watch all the films in the series here: • When did you know it w...

[@BennettAustin7]

Geez that family is insane

[@highviewbarbell]

for real i thought "my one brother was a dead loss" would lead into like he was a layabout or got into drugs, not that they were disappointed because he because a world-renowned physicist instead of a doctor xD

[@grahamblack1961]

Smart people marry other smart people and have smart children.

[@dchartier1]

@@grahamblack1961 Similar to athletic people and beautiful people!

[@dchartier1]

Growing up in that family certainly would have given me an inferiority complex.

[@muhammadusmannaseem4277]

​@@grahamblack1961and that's how we get ultra villains

[@hippospudweb]

He's talking about his brothers Oliver Penrose (physicist) and Jonathan Penrose (chessplayer)

[@awaedin]

I've played Oliver at chess ( he beat me).

[@hippospudweb]

Not surprised Oliver is a master level player@@awaedin

[@ffc1a28c7]

The irony is that roger penrose has a nobel prize in physics.

[@sahilhashmi1151]

​@@ffc1a28c7You mean a fields medal.

[@vikramheble9972]

@sahilhashmi1151 he was awarded the Nobel for black hole related research.

[@superscienceshow]

Doing pretty well for 92 years old.

[@Ken-er9cq]

Reminds me a bit of the Bernoulli family. Their father wanted them to become something that made money, like doctors or accountants. Instead some of them were more interested in science. One nice outcome is they will be remembered for their scientific achievements, something that wouldn't have happened if they had taken more lucrative professions.

[@EdgarPoe_Raven]

Hopefully every path would to take you to rome in that case

[@vitorguerreiro3902]

funny how in some countries accountants is saw more or less as an "enrichment" stuff

[@harimadhavan1712]

All did extremely well and their parents would be extremely proud of them. A very intellectual family and Sir Roger is a true legend. Can't believe that he's almost 93 years old and his brain is still as sharp as a few decades ago. Everyone goes on about exercise and healthy living, but keeping your brain active and challenged is the most important thing.

[@softseagreens]

The genius of our day but first and foremost a wonderful man - happy birthday with lots of love, Sir Roger!

[@markappleton4955]

2 doctors for 1. ( plus a nobel prize winning son too.❤

[@jensraab2902]

The parents cannot have been around anymore when he won the Nobel Prize in 2020 but no doubt they realized early enough that their little Roger had made a very good choice! 🙂

[@zaraizabella]

insane how over achieving his whole family was, they were all so cerebral

[@goodfty]

It's one of those things where you go "Okay yeah it's not always environmental, definitely genetic"

[@Max-kv8uw]

Why would that be the conclusion? Have their parents not only parted their genes to them but also the environment in which they have grown?

[@100iqgaming]

it could be environmental, they may be very hard working

[@DeJay7]

Yeah, when both parents are so focused on their work, with a tiny bit of luck the children are all capable of great things. But truly, a nobel prize winner mathematical physicist, another physicist, a doctor, and don't forget the chess grandmaster. Those all require so much hard work.

[@blaze3998]

@@goodfty not at all, a supporting environment and dedicating family can definitely get you far in life

[@musescore7588]

"they got two, to the price of one." 😂

[@leerockx357]

What a family! And what a man!

[@OzGoober]

Thanks for the story

[@alexgoldhaber1786]

Beautiful and accomplished family.

[@javastream5015]

Very smart family!

[@mathgeek7966]

What a great story! Can't believe Math(s) almost lost out! Happy birthday Sir Roger!

[@bluesque9687]

Brilliant family all round! What would dinner table conversations be like? Their cats must be confused!

[@bksaif]

Wonderful people ❤😂

[@AdonizedeckAckahBlayMiezah]

His elder brother ( Oliver Penrose) a physicist and a professor of Mathematics and his younger brother ( Jonathan Penrose) a ten times chess champion and his sister Shirley Hodgson a geneticist.

[@frannyp46]

Roger was well ahead of his time here. He’s obviously listened to Making plans for Nigel by XTC.

[@OxfordMathematics]

And if young Nigel says he's happy...

[@Mari_Selalu_Berbuat_Kebaikan]

Let's always do alot of good ❤️

[@BuGGyBoBerl]

one hear this kind of stories where basically all of the family members were highly educated quite a lot. im curious of the causes. a few things i think may play a role (probably all of them but to what degree) are: 1. genetics 2. raising children a certain way and having a certain environment/circumstances 3. some sort of bias that makes one remember such cases (lots of educated folk in a family) more than others. im especially interested whats the margin of 1. and 2. (and what else plays a role)

[@versus19rs]

'My brother became british chess champion a record ten-times... as far as I notice'

[@MathematicalToolbox]

Never understood why parents try to force university or particular degrees on their kids. If you did even a halfway decent job raising your kids, then they'll figure life out on their own and make their own path. Penrose is a legend, though, and there could have been a world where we knew him for his brilliance in medicine rather than physics and math.

[@FrogFace64]

Totally agree. Personally, I find it revolting

[@sage_zarf]

my parents with wanting me to be a doctor:

[@RandomGuy0987]

hint: it's because we live in a capitalist hellscape and money solves problems. Doctors make money.

[@Exachad]

What's funny is that Lionel Penrose was a stacked mathematician too despite doing it as a hobby, but he didn't want his son to do it. 🤣

[@bigbluebuttonman1137]

Some parents can’t accept that their kids eventually become their own thinking, choosing selves. A little bit of prodding and healthy questions is okay, but this sort of pushy stuff is not.

[@vcab6875]

Impressive intellectual family

[@signalrepeater]

That's the history of almost all great men . If only they did what their parents wanted them to do!!!Where would we be??

[@HarryNicNicholas]

gotta love penrose. oops, sir roger.

[@santoshr2984]

Heheheh .. so they got two for the price of one ... hilarious. I thought it was an Indian parent thing only, I am so relieved :0)

[@LendallPitts]

My parents wanted me to be a lawyer so I studied Latin in high school. I rebelled and studied psychology and Egyptology at the university (figuring that those two things would never result in a career in law) and then... I rebelled again and went into the movie business. So why do I have such a strong interest in physics now?

[@ValidatingUsername]

Day n+1 trying to correct modern interpretation of Penrose diagrams, black holes[,] and relativity 😊

[@dgw1970]

I used to talk about chess with Oliver at HWU frequently.

[@GCKteamKrispy]

His whole family is geniuses😂

[@grahamblack1961]

I'd love Roger Penrose to be my GP.

[@DoxxTheMathGeek]

How smart are you? His family: Yes!

[@lily-ui5st]

😂❤❤❤

[@Feverstockphoto]

Two for the price of one!? You do the math 🙂. 92 =🎂+ 🍺🍺👍

[@caravanlifenz]

They got two doctors for the price of one 🥰

[@hrperformance]

Ye, parents be silly sometimes 😂

[@jessewolf7649]

Read The Road to Reality - a mathematical guide to the physical laws of the Universe by Sir R. Penrose.

[@audience2]

Parents shouldn't try to force the career choice of their children.

[@francoivaldi9614]

Modern man identifies Science as a set of disciplines based on observation, experience and calculation, which using formalized languages such as Geometry and Mathematics, try to provide an answer to the questions that human beings ask themselves to understand the reasons for their existence and the nature of which they are part. In the modern world we are used to seeing scientific development reflected almost immediately in Technology, while this was not the case in antiquity; for example, the Greeks considered science as an activity aimed only to knowledge, and not at the material progress of society. Finally we are children of Greek thought, to which we resort in search of future truth, with Plato on one side and Democritus on the other. We note that the one closest to the vision of reality inherent in the "Physics of Resonances" is Platonic thought, where the geometric vision of the Cosmos is based on the harmony of the golden section and on the Platonic solids connected in correspondence with the air, water , earth, fire and ether understood as the "fifth essence". With the advent of quantum physics, where two great scientists were Heisenberg and Schrödinger, the faith in the existence of a "concrete and real" matter, as a substance defined and subject to the "principium individuationis", disappeared; in fact Heisenberg abjuring the hegemony of Democritus, maintained that physics must be essentially built on the hypothesis of symmetry; he therefore decided to follow the path of an immaterialist atomism like that of Plato, and wrote: "In the beginning there was symmetry", an expression certainly closer to the "Intimate nature of the Universe" than that of Democritus who maintained: "In the beginning there was the particle". While Schrödinger compared the corpuscular interpretation of reality with that of the wave-form. Basically we could say that these two great scientists wanted to say the same thing using different but complementary languages. This historical-scientific premise serves to lead us to understand that contemporary science is not able to arrive at its Unification, because being divided into many specialized chapters, it loses the ability to synthesise; to achieve this purpose it is necessary to discover the fundamental rules of the "Intimate nature of the Universe", in which the concept of "wave-particle" dualism is replaced with those of "Field and Resonance", which characterize the research line of the "Physics of Resonances”, oriented towards the search for the “why” at the basis of the phenomena existing in the Universe. In the "Physics of Resonances" nothing is separable, so in Space there is only one "raw material": the "Quantum Vacuum" or more simply "Space", which the Ancients had identified as "Ether", later denied by Relativity, in which Einstein replaced the depth of Space with Time; but here we must take note that it is absolutely not certain that our equations, however beautiful and comfortable they are for us, then correspond to the reality of the functionings inherent in the "Intimate Nature of the Universe". The Matter for the "Physics of Resonances" is none other than "Quantum vacuum" condensed by a stimulus in Space. This scientific vision of "Resonance Physics" also leads us to understand the concept of "Universal Consciousness and Intelligence", which cannot be relegated only to man, since he simply represents a part of a large and harmonic "Brilliant Garland ” in which the principle of “fractality” applies. See: www.academia.edu/117314731/The_Science_of_Resonances_in_the_Intimate_Nature_of_the_Universe www.researchgate.net/publication/379723295_The_Science_of_Resonances_in_the_Intimate_Nature_of_the_Universe www.researchgate.net/publication/366030609_The_Elemental_Intelligence_of_the_Cosmos_and_the_Acoustic_Quantum_Code_of_Resonant_Coherence_Gravitational_Connection_in_Cosmogenesis_Human_Consciousness_and_the_Role_of_Artificial_Intelligence_in_the www.researchgate.net/publication/353804793_Mechanisms_for_Information_Signalling_in_the_Universe_The_Integral_Connectivity_of_the_Fabric_of_Reality_Revealed

[@vonBottorff]

Parents: Necessary evils.

[@mimzim7141]

Imagine he chose biology

[@exodiara6392]

But he didnt say how he knew it was math. I mean, how did he feel it was math? I thought he was like a precocius mathleta from very young age or something like that.

[@mizzyroro]

Funny when I did A levels that was the exact combination to get you into medicine. Not biology.

[@Ken-er9cq]

I expect that medical faculties decided that it was safer for them to teach biology rather than letting high school teachers do it.

[@mathematics5573]

Talk about pushy parents!

[@poetlaureate7334]

Question for Sir Penrose: - could their be conceivably a mind which produces images of objects moving upwards rather than downwards due to the effect of gravity? - as mind forms the imagery of what we see as the world around us (hence the issue with hallucinations occuring in the disrupted mind) that means what we see and therefore measure in science is produced in the brain from sensory inputs...so when we see things fall downwards because of gravity is it then concievable to have a mind in some hypothetical sentient being which creates the image of objects falling upwards instead of downwards due to the same force gravity.... ?????

[@hatebreeder999]

Very interesting question. Its possible as I have seen some crazy visuals on psychedelics. Like buildings bending inwards and space getting wraped

[@Verschlungen]

I was heartened to hear him use the word "mathematics" several times, and "maths" only once in passing. The two ugliest utterances on the planet: #1 'maths' (which Brits believe is a word -- it is not), #2 'Euro' (as pronounced in German, which is identical to the sound made when a person is about 97% of the way through a vomiting session, close to empty).

[@bassamxp]

🤣

[@charlessmyth]

Roger was not faced with such a binary option. He could have taken biology independently of the school via an external examination. Check out the big brain on, Roger :-)

[@user-db1vp2st5y]

Cheess..(Shah) it's not British..math but Persia Iran game.strategy..(I like math chemistry and physics) but I like much more music ..it's a kind of new prophecy..

[@cxa24]

No

[@ThompsonSit]

so the doctor choice was only because the headmaster stopped you. What if the headmaster said okay to biology.

[@robertocosta7092]

Could you share those genes to the rest of the world, please? 😁

[@karlyohe6379]

If anyone ever wanted proof that there is a strong genetic component to intelligence, tell them to have a gander at the Penroses. I majored in girls and f*cking around in college, and now I'm having to learn higher level maths on my own in a Quixotic attempt to understand general relativity in my dotage.

[@ellevasc]

i mean, him and his sibilinas all grew up in the same environment (with presumably incredibly smart parents), so nurture could be equally important here

[@karlyohe6379]

@@ellevasc After I wrote this, I realized one of you fellow-admirers of the great Sir Roger would point that out; and I have to agree with you. My opinion is that it's almost entirely genetic, but that is based on separated identical twin studies, et alii (which we obviously do not have with this amazing family).

[@user-up5ld4pj7w]

Jesus Christ only begotten son of the father church of saints g-d in Christ amen moses' eleven brothers became jealous of jacob as he was the eldest and most favoured of his father's children so they plotted to kill him one day they lured him into the desert where they abandoned him in a well to die however moses was found by a travelling group of traders and sold in Egypt as a slave in Egypt his wisdom became so famous that he rose to become pharoahs most trusted advisor one day famine came to the land of jacobs family and they set off to Egypt for there was bread in Egypt and when they arrived in Egypt they were recognised by Jacob but they knew him not

[@johndoyle2347]

Reposting and slight editing of recent mathematical ideas into one post: Split-complex numbers relate to the diagonality (like how it's expressed on Anakin's lightsaber) of ring/cylindrical singularities and to why the 6 corner/cusp singularities in dark matter must alternate. The so-called triplex numbers deal with how energy is transferred between particles and bodies and how an increase in energy also increases the apparent mass. Dual numbers relate to Euler's Identity, where the thin mass is cancelling most of the attractive and repulsive forces. The imaginary number is mass in stable particles of any conformation. In Big Bounce physics, dual numbers relate to how the attractive and repulsive forces work together to turn the matter that we normally think of into dark matter. The natural logarithm of the imaginary number is pi divided by 2 radians times i. This means that, at whatever point of stable matter other than at a singularity, the attractive or repulsive force being emitted is perpendicular to the "plane" of mass. In Big Bounce physics, this corresponds to how particles "crystalize" into stacks where a central particle is greatly pressured to break/degenerate by another particle that is in front, another behind, another to the left, another to the right, another on top, and another below. Dark matter is formed quickly afterwards. Mediants are important to understanding the Big Crunch side of a Big Bounce event. Matter has locked up, with particles surrounding and pressuring each other. The matter gets broken up into fractions of what it was and then gets added together to form the dark matter known from our Inflationary Epoch. Sectrices are inversely related, as they deal with all stable conformations of matter being broken up, not added like the implosive "shrapnel" of mediants. Ford circles relate to mediants. Tangential circles, tethered to a line. Sectrices: the families of curves deal with impossible arrangements. (The Fibonacci spiral deals with how dark matter is degenerated/broken up and with supernovae. The Golden spiral deals with how the normal matter, that we usually think of, degenerates, forming black holes.) The Archimedean spiral deals with matter spiraling in upon itself, degenerating in a Big Crunch. The Dinostratus quadratrix deals with the laminar flow of dark matter being broken up by lingering black holes. I'm happily surprised to figure out sectrices. Trisectrices are another thing. More complex and I don't know if I have all the curves available to use in analyzing them. But, I can see Fibonacci and Golden spirals relating to the trisectrices. General relativity: 8 shapes, as dictated by the equation? 4 general shapes, but with a variation of membranous or a filament? Dark matter mostly flat, with its 6 alternating corner/cusp edge singularities. Neutrons like if a balloon had two ends, for blowing it up. Protons with aligned singularities, and electrons with just a lone cylindrical singularity? Prime numbers in polar coordinates: note the missing arms and the missing radials. Matter spiraling in, degenerating? Matter radiating out - the laminar flow of dark matter in an Inflationary Epoch? Connection to Big Bounce theory? "Operation -- Annihilate!", from the first season of the original Star Trek: was that all about dark matter and the cosmic microwave background radiation? Anakin Skywalker connection?

[@AJzilllaPro]

Is this meant to be a joke lol.I’m not that smart but this was an eyesore to see and even harder to read lol.

[@Feverstockphoto]

I don't think you are on to something rather than just on to nothing but I would probably consider taking 2 Anadin Extra and trying not to think about it too much. Consult a doctor first though before it 'spirals' out of control, that usually works for me! 🙃👍

[@user-cu9ww9tj4i]

제 수학적 능력이 높은 차원의 방식으로 세상을 바라보고 그 움직임을 본다는 증거입니다.저는 항상 결백합니다.

[@SuperZareh]

Listen am selling ur book the emperors mind i have the real formula and it comes with a price so if u all are intelligent species then tell elon to pay me my aerodynamic money man

[@skinny7010]

So would you say brains runs in the family?

[@agrand743]

Goes to show that intelligence is largely genetic