Oliver Penrose

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Oliver Penrose
Born (1929-06-06) 6 June 1929 (age 96)
Alma mater University College, London
King's College, Cambridge
Known for Penrose criterion
Father Lionel Penrose
Relatives Roger Penrose (brother)
Jonathan Penrose (brother)
Shirley Hodgson (sister)
J. Doyle Penrose (grandfather)
John Beresford Leathes (grandfather)
Antony Penrose (cousin)
Awards FRS (1987)
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions Imperial College, London
Open University
Heriot-Watt University
Doctoral advisor Neville Temperley
Website www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~oliver/

Oliver Penrose FRS FRSE (born 6 June 1929) is a British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at Heriot-Watt University. [1] His topics of interest include statistical mechanics, [2] phase transitions in metals and the physical chemistry of surfactants. He is known for introducing the concept of off-diagonal long-range order, important to the present understanding of superfluids and superconductors. He is also known for the Penrose criterion in plasma physics.

Contents

He was associated with the Open University for seventeen years and was a Professor of Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh from 1986 until his retirement in 1994.

Penrose has worked in fundamental topics, which include understanding the physical basis for the direction of time and interpretations of quantum mechanics. [3] [4]

Family

He is the son of the scientist Lionel Penrose and brother of the mathematical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics Roger Penrose, chess Grandmaster Jonathan Penrose, and geneticist Shirley Hodgson. [5] [6]

References

  1. "Notes", The rainbow and the worm: the physics of organisms by Mae-Wan Ho, World Scientific, 1998, Pg. 77
  2. "Papers dedicated to Oliver Penrose on the occasion of his 65th birthday", Volume 77, Issues 1–2 of Journal of Statistical Physics
  3. "Quantum Mechanics and Real Events", Quantum chaos—quantum measurement by Predrag Cvitanović, Ian Percival, Andreas Wirzba and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Scientific Affairs Division, Springer, 1992, Pg. 257
  4. "The physical review—the first hundred years:" a selection of seminal papers and commentaries, Volume 1 by H. Henry Stroke, Springer, 1995
  5. Image processing III: mathematical methods, algorithms and applications by Jonathan M. Blackledge and Martin J. Turner, Horwood Publishing, 2001, Pg. 2
  6. "The Mandelbrot Set", Why Beliefs Matter: Reflections on the Nature of Science by E. Brian Davies, Oxford University Press, 2010, Pg. 119, ISBN   0191591564