Sir Roger Penrose

The January issue of Commentary includes a book review, “Lonely in Space,” by David Guaspari, reviewing The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius, a book by Patchen Barss. Professor Penrose is portrayed as super-intelligent, but not a good family man, and lacking in social skills. Guaspari quotes Barss quoting a collaborator of Penrose as contrasting being a human genius with being Penrose, whose insights “seem to stem from some superhuman life form.”

I may be qualified to comment on this in a small way, as I once had dinner with Sir Roger, and then ran into him a few months later, at which point we exchanged a few words. (He spent, and may still spend, part of his at Penn State, where my father used to be a professor of philosophy, and I was at that time a graduate student in materials; my parents were having the great man over for dinner, and invited me.) I don’t recall my interactions with him in detail, but I do recall him speaking to me politely, and I don’t remember him being paralyzed and unable to communicate. He may not be very good at dealing with regular people, especially female people, but as a super-nerd, he got along smoothly enough with a regular nerd. If he has made a mess of his family life, the same can be said of plenty of people of ordinary or below average intelligence.