Roger Penrose

“Well, gauge theory is very fundamental to our understanding of physical forces these days. But they are also dependent on a mathematical idea, which has been around for longer than gauge theory has.”

“There are considerable mysteries surrounding the strange values that Nature's actual particles have for their mass and charge. For example, there is the unexplained 'fine structure constant' ... governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions, ....”

“I used to make polyhedra with my father. There were no clear lines between games and toys for children and his professional work.”

“Might we... be doing something with our brains that cannot be described in computational terms at all? How do our feelings of conscious awareness - of happiness, pain, love, aesthetic sensibility, will, understanding, etc. - fit into such a computational picture?”

“And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.”

“My own way of thinking is to ponder long and I hope deeply on problems and for a long time which I keep away for years and years and I never really let them go.”

“I have certainly enjoyed puzzles since an early age, and things that look like impossible things are often particularly intriguing.”

“Ordinary photons do have spin, they have a notion of helicity so they spin around their direction on motion.”

“The basic theory in twistor theory is not to add extra dimensions.”

“Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.”

“A computational device is incapable of developing a mind. We got consciousness not just by being clever.”

“We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.”

“But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.”

“So what I'm saying is why don't we think about changing Schrodinger's equation at some level when masses become too big at the level that you might have to worry about Einstein's general relativity.”

“Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.”

“Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.”

“I think I am intrigued by paradoxes. If something seems to be a paradox, it has something deeper, something worth exploring.”

“My father himself was a human geneticist who was recognized for demonstrating that older mothers tend to get more Down syndrome children, but he had lots of scientific interests.”

“Science and fun cannot be separated.”

“The image of Stephen Hawking - who has died aged 76 - in his motorised wheelchair, with head contorted slightly to one side and hands crossed over to work the controls, caught the public imagination as a true symbol of the triumph of mind over matter.”