You may recall this fairly well-known picture by Escher:
The ones I liked most had to do with Special Relativity. Penrose can obviously hack the equations, but he also has to see them, and he is astonishingly resourceful at coming up with visualisations. What saves him, and makes the book readable to non-experts like me who at least have some mathematical background, is his uniquely visual way of experiencing mathematics. If it really were true that every equation halved your sales, he would not have sold a single copy. In Penrose's case, it's mathematics and physics: he resolutely refuses to dumb it down, and includes a seriously frightening quantity of Greek letters. And if you removed the chess from Polugayevsky, there wouldn't be any story. De Beauvoir has to assume (in my case, alas, incorrectly), that you're conversant with most of French literature. Churchill needs the maps, troop movements and political networking. You can't build up this kind of picture without including a huge number of details if you took them away, the whole texture of the world would disappear with them. Like the other books, it's not an easy read. Penrose belongs in this select company: I finally believe I have some idea, no matter how faint, of how a great mathematical physicist sees the universe. Polugayevsky's Grandmaster Preparation, which many chessplayers treat almost as a sacred text, is the only truly honest account I've seen of how a top Grandmaster thinks. Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography, more than any other book I know, gives you the feeling of being a major literary figure. While you're reading them, Churchill's History of the Second World War and Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien let you be a great statesman at a pivotal moment in history. Polugayevsky's Grandmaster Preparation, which many chessplayers treat a Many of my all-time favourite books make the list because they show you what it's like to be inside the mind of an extraordinary person. Many of my all-time favourite books make the list because they show you what it's like to be inside the mind of an extraordinary person. Here, Penrose examines the mathematical foundations of the physical universe, exposing the underlying beauty of physics and giving us one the most important works in modern science writing.more From the very first attempts by the Greeks to grapple with the complexities of our known world to the latest application of infinity in physics, The Road to Reality carefully explores the movement of the smallest atomic particles and reaches into the vastness of intergalactic space. From the very first attempts by the Greeks to grapple with the complexities of our known world to the latest application of infinity in physics, The Road to Reality carefully explores the movement of the smallest ato Roger Penrose, one of the most accomplished scientists of our time, presents the only comprehensive and comprehensible account of the physics of the universe. Roger Penrose, one of the most accomplished scientists of our time, presents the only comprehensive and comprehensible account of the physics of the universe.
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