Nobel Prize in Physics · 2020
Roger Penrose
He proved that Einstein's theory predicts black holes will form, turning a mathematical oddity into something astronomers set out to find.
The Nobel citation: “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”
- Born
- August 8, 1931, Colchester, United Kingdom
- Shared with
- Reinhard Genzel, Andrea Ghez
- Affiliation at the time
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Disputed inclusion. Sources disagree on whether this laureate meets our standard of at least one Jewish parent. The evidence is set out under Jewish background below. We count this laureate by default, and the methodology page shows how the results change without disputed cases.
Physics prize
2020
Shared with 2 other laureates.
Age that year
89years
Born in 1931.
Sources cited
26
Fact-checked September 24, 2026.
- The key idea for his black-hole proof came to him in 1964 as he crossed a London street. He traced it later that day while puzzling over a sudden feeling of elation.
- His endless staircase, drawn with his father and published in 1958, inspired M.C. Escher's famous 1960 lithograph Ascending and Descending.
- His never-repeating two-tile patterns of the mid-1970s helped scientists understand quasicrystals, a discovery that won Dan Shechtman the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- In a wartime Canadian school he was judged slow at arithmetic and moved down a class. A later teacher let him take as long as he needed on maths tests, and he scored in the 90s.
- His Jewish grandmother, a concert-level pianist from St Petersburg, kept her origins so secret that she hid even her maiden name.
The breakthrough
Proving that black holes must form (1965)
Einstein's general relativity describes gravity as the bending of space and time. Soon after 1915, Karl Schwarzschild found a solution to its equations that describes what we now call a black hole, and in 1939 Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder showed how a collapsing cloud of matter could form one. But those calculations assumed a perfectly round, smooth star. Real stars are lumpy and spin, and many physicists, Einstein included, doubted that black holes could exist. In 1963 two Soviet physicists argued that realistic collapse would never produce a singularity. In autumn 1964 Penrose tackled the problem without assuming any symmetry. His key idea was the trapped surface: a closed surface where even light aimed outward is dragged inward. Picture a river racing toward a waterfall faster than anyone can swim. Whichever way you swim, you are carried over the edge. Using new geometric and topological methods, Penrose proved that once a trapped surface forms, and matter has positive energy, nothing can stop the collapse. Space-time must end in a singularity, where the known laws of physics break down. His three-page paper, published in January 1965, showed that black holes are a robust prediction of Einstein's theory, not a quirk of idealized math. The Nobel committee notes that it is still regarded as the most important contribution to general relativity since Einstein. With Stephen Hawking he later extended the method to show that, under reasonable assumptions, the universe itself began in a singularity: the Big Bang.[1],[3],[4],[5],[7],[8]
“I would say generally do what excites you, not just what you think you should be doing.”
What it meant for humanity
Before Penrose, black holes were a mathematical oddity that even Einstein doubted. His 1965 theorem showed that they form naturally whenever enough matter collapses, and the Nobel committee credits his work with giving astronomers strong motivation to search for them. The search paid off. Black holes swallowing gas are now the accepted explanation for quasars, among the brightest objects in the universe. Colliding black holes produced the gravitational waves detected by LIGO, and in 2022 the Event Horizon Telescope released the first image of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy; the size of its glowing ring agreed with Einstein's theory. With Stephen Hawking, Penrose applied the same reasoning to the whole cosmos, showing that under reasonable assumptions the universe began in a singularity: the Big Bang. He also gave physicists tools they still use: Penrose diagrams, which fit infinite space and time onto a single page, and the Penrose process, which shows how energy can be drawn from a spinning black hole, an idea later built into a widely used model of how black holes power jets. His twistor theory is now used to calculate what happens in particle collisions, and his spin networks became a building block of loop quantum gravity, an attempt to unite gravity with quantum physics. His curiosity reached far beyond physics. His never-repeating tilings helped scientists interpret quasicrystals and analyze medieval Islamic tile patterns. The Moore–Penrose inverse for matrices, which he found independently of the American mathematician E.H. Moore's earlier work, is among his most cited results and is used in statistics and engineering. His colleagues at Oxford hold up his popular books, such as The Emperor's New Mind, as a model for explaining science without dumbing it down.
- In 2022 the Event Horizon Telescope unveiled the first image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole of four million solar masses at the center of the Milky Way: the kind of object Penrose showed general relativity predicts.[5],[13]
- Penrose diagrams, which bring infinitely distant places and times into a finite drawing, are described by the Nobel committee as indispensable tools for studying curved space-time.[5]
- His 1969 insight that energy can be drawn from a spinning black hole was used by Blandford and Znajek in 1977 to model how a black hole can generate power, a process thought to drive many black-hole jets.[5]
- His aperiodic tilings, made from just two shapes, were used to interpret quasicrystals, discovered by Dan Shechtman and honored with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[9],[10]
- The Moore–Penrose matrix inverse, which he found independently of E.H. Moore, is among his most cited work and is used in fields from statistics to engineering; twistor methods now help calculate particle collisions.[2],[10]
Impact in numbers
Penrose's impact is on understanding, so we record no quantified claims. His 1965 theorem showed that black holes are a natural outcome of Einstein's gravity rather than a mathematical curiosity, and it motivated the search that followed: black holes now explain quasars, colliding black holes produced the gravitational waves detected by LIGO, and telescopes have imaged the black hole at our galaxy's center. With Hawking he showed that, under reasonable assumptions, the universe itself began in a singularity. His tools, from Penrose diagrams to twistors and spin networks, are used across relativity, quantum-gravity research and particle physics. Beyond physics, his tilings helped explain quasicrystals, the Moore–Penrose matrix inverse is used in statistics and engineering, and his impossible staircase shaped one of M.C. Escher's best-known prints. None of this has a credible count of lives or dollars: black-hole physics feeds understanding rather than products, and the matrix inverse is one widely used tool among many, so any number would be invented.
Fundamental scienceMathematicsSpaceCulture
No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.
The double edge
No harms are documented from Penrose's science itself. The controversies are personal and scientific. Patchen Barss's 2024 biography, drawing on many interviews with Penrose and on letters, describes his years-long pursuit in the early 1970s of Judith Daniels, a family friend and mathematics undergraduate, while he was married; one reviewer reads the letters as showing that his attentions were unwanted. Reviews say the book reports that he ended his first marriage by moving to Oxford without telling his wife, Joan, and their three sons that he was leaving them, and that two sons described his "physical aggression" toward her. In 1988 he married Vanessa Thomas, a mathematics PhD student in his group who was more than 30 years younger; she never finished her doctorate. Scientifically, two of his later ideas are widely doubted: the theory, developed with Stuart Hameroff, that consciousness depends on quantum effects in brain microtubules, and his claims to have found traces of a universe before the Big Bang in the cosmic microwave background.
- Moderate
Treatment of women and family, described in a 2024 biography
Reviews of Patchen Barss's biography The Impossible Man report a one-sided, obsessive correspondence with the student Judith Daniels during his first marriage; that he left his wife and three sons by taking up the Oxford post without telling them he was leaving; his sons' account of physical aggression toward their mother; and his marriage to his PhD student Vanessa Thomas, who never finished her doctorate.[18],[19]
- Minor
A contested theory of quantum consciousness
Penrose argues that human understanding is not computational and, with Stuart Hameroff, that consciousness arises from quantum effects in neurons' microtubules. Max Tegmark calculated that such quantum states would fall apart within about a ten-trillionth of a second or less, far too fast to matter for brain activity. Hameroff and colleagues dispute that calculation. Penrose considers the theory a serious contender, but it remains a minority view.[2],[17],[20],[26]
- Minor
Disputed evidence for a universe before the Big Bang
Penrose and colleagues reported patterns in the cosmic microwave background that they present as evidence for his cyclic cosmology. An independent analysis found the claimed circles just as often in simulated skies of the standard model, and a re-analysis of one claimed signal cut its confidence from 99.98% to 87%, which is not statistically significant.[2],[21],[22]
Against the odds
Penrose himself faced little hardship connected to Jewish ancestry, and it is honest to say so. He grew up in a prosperous, highly educated English family; his father's side were Quakers, and his Jewish grandmother kept her background hidden. The Jewish story in his family belongs to her generation. In the Russian Empire where she grew up, most Jews were legally confined to the Pale of Settlement. Only certain groups, such as wealthy merchants, university graduates and some craftsmen, could live in cities like St Petersburg, and after 1881 the so-called Temporary Laws tightened restrictions; in 1891 and 1892 thousands of Jewish craftsmen and their families were expelled from Moscow. She left her strict Jewish family, married in England and concealed her origins so completely that even her maiden name was a secret. When war loomed in 1939, the Penroses sailed to North America and spent the war in London, Ontario. A physicist reviewing his biography points out that such safe passage was denied to many continental European Jewish families. That same year the United States and Canada refused to admit the passengers of the St. Louis, 937 people who were almost all Jewish refugees; 254 of them were later killed in the Holocaust. Penrose's own obstacle was a Canadian school that judged him slow, until a teacher gave him the time he needed.
1939
War
With the Second World War approaching, his family left England in early 1939 for Philadelphia and then London, Ontario, where they stayed until the war ended. It was a planned move by a well-off family, not flight from persecution; that year the US and Canada turned away the St. Louis and its mostly Jewish refugees.[2],[18],[24]
—
Other
As a young boy in a Canadian school he was judged slow at mental arithmetic and moved down a class. A later teacher saw that he simply needed time and let him finish tests at his own pace, and he then scored in the 90s.[2],[6]
—
Discrimination
Family background: his grandmother grew up in St Petersburg under Russian laws that restricted where Jews could live, then hid her Jewish origins, including her maiden name, after marrying in England.[2],[23]
Jewish background
Penrose's only known Jewish grandparent is his maternal grandmother, the concert-level pianist Sonia Marie Natanson (Sara Mara Natansohn on her birth certificate). Born in Latvia, she lived with her strict Jewish family in St Petersburg, left to study in Switzerland, married the English physiologist John Beresford Leathes and hid her Jewish origins. Because the line runs through his mother's mother, traditional Jewish law counts Penrose as Jewish, which is why Jewish-laureate lists include him. His father's family were Quakers. In a 2007 interview he said he could be considered Jewish under those rules but does not identify as Jewish; he has said he believes in no established religion.[2],[14],[15],[16],[17],[25]
Key dates
August 8, 1931
Born in Colchester, England, the second of three sons of the geneticist Lionel Penrose and Margaret Leathes, who had trained in medicine.[1],[2]
1939
With war approaching, the family sails to the United States and by summer settles in London, Ontario, Canada, for the rest of the war.[2],[16]
1952
Graduates from University College London with first-class honours in mathematics.[2],[17]
1957
Earns his PhD in algebraic geometry at the University of Cambridge.[2],[3],[17]
February 1958
With his father, publishes 'Impossible Objects' in the British Journal of Psychology, including the endless staircase that later inspired Escher.[11]
1964
In the autumn, while working at Birkbeck College, London, he conceives the trapped surface while crossing a street.[4],[7]
January 1965
Physical Review Letters publishes 'Gravitational collapse and space-time singularities', proving that black-hole formation is a robust result of general relativity.[3],[5]
1967
Introduces twistor theory, a new geometric description of space-time that he and his students develop for decades.[2],[10]
1970
With Stephen Hawking, publishes a theorem showing that under reasonable assumptions a past singularity, the Big Bang, is inevitable.[5]
1973
Becomes Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.[16],[17]
1974
Discovers Penrose tilings, two-tile patterns that never repeat; a decade later they helped explain quasicrystals.[9],[17]
1988
Shares the Wolf Prize in Physics with Stephen Hawking for showing the necessity of cosmological singularities and explaining black holes.[12]
1989
Publishes The Emperor's New Mind, arguing that conscious understanding cannot come from computation alone.[2],[17]
October 6, 2020
Awarded half the Nobel Prize in Physics; he receives his medal at the Swedish Embassy in London on 8 December.[3],[10]
Sources
- 1.Roger Penrose – Facts – 2020 · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2020
- 2.Roger Penrose – Biographical · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
- 3.Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 · Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 2020
- 4.Popular information: Black holes and the Milky Way's darkest secret · Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 2020
- 5.Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020: Theoretical foundation for black holes and the supermassive compact object at the Galactic centre · Nobel Committee for Physics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2020
- 6.Roger Penrose interview, March 2021: "I used to think Nobel Laureates were other people" · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2021
- 7.Roger Penrose – Interview (telephone interview, 6 October 2020) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2020
- 8.Award ceremony speech, Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 (Ulf Danielsson) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2020
- 9.Popular information: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 (quasicrystals) · Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 2011
- 10.Roger Penrose joint winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics · Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, 2020
- 11.Ascending and Descending · Escher in The Palace (Escher museum, The Hague), 2018
- 12.Roger Penrose – Wolf Prize Laureate in Physics 1988 · Wolf Foundation
- 13.Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy (eso2208) · European Southern Observatory, 2022
- 14.Scientists of Jewish heritage among trio to win Nobel prize for black hole finds · The Times of Israel (AP and ToI Staff), 2020
- 15.Jewish Nobel Prize Winners in Physics (note 30) · Jinfo.org
- 16.Roger Penrose (1931 - ) · Jewish Virtual Library
- 17.Roger Penrose · Wikipedia
- 18.So you think you know Roger Penrose? Be prepared to be shocked (review of Patchen Barss, The Impossible Man) · Physics World (Chanda Prescod-Weinstein), 2025
- 19.Lonely in Space (review of Patchen Barss, The Impossible Man) · Commentary Magazine (David Guaspari), 2024
- 20.The importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes (Tegmark, Physical Review E 61, 4194) · arXiv / Physical Review E, 2000
- 21.Re-evaluating evidence for Hawking points in the CMB (Jow and Scott, JCAP 2020) · arXiv / Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2020
- 22.Searching for concentric low variance circles in the cosmic microwave background (DeAbreu et al., JCAP 2015) · arXiv / Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2015
- 23.Modern Jewish History: The Pale of Settlement (from Encyclopaedia Judaica) · Jewish Virtual Library / Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2007
- 24.Voyage of the St. Louis · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
- 25.List of Jewish Nobel laureates · Wikipedia
- 26.Quantum computation in brain microtubules: Decoherence and biological feasibility (Hagan, Hameroff and Tuszynski, Physical Review E 65, 061901) · arXiv / Physical Review E, 2002
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