A singular mind: Roger Penrose on his Nobel Prize

Sir Roger Penrose was at school when he realised that his mind worked in an unusual way. ‘I thought, maybe when I go to university, I’ll find people who think like me,’ he tells me, at the beginning of what was to be a fascinating conversation, stretching long into the afternoon. ‘But it wasn’t like that at all. When I would talk to someone about an idea, I found myself not understanding a word they were saying.’

Just after we spoke, in early December, Penrose received the Nobel Prize in Physics, so perhaps it’s no surprise that he should think a little differently. But, as he explained it to me, his mind is unusually visual. Penrose’s father Lionel was an artist as well as a psychiatrist and mathematician, and a great influence on Roger. Father and son used to go for long walks together in search of things to draw. ‘I liked to do realistic pictures, but sometimes I would branch out and do more surrealistic things.