Cover page taken from http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10664.html

Roger Penrose is unquestionably a giant of 20th century theoretical physics. He has been enormously influential in diverse areas of both mathematics and physics, from the nature of spacetime to twistor theory, to geometrical structures and beyond. His famous, but perhaps less well-accepted theories on quantum consciousness, the collapse of the wave function, and visible imprints of cyclic cosmologies on our universe are thought-provoking, to say the least.

I will premise this review of his latest book “Faith, Fashion and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe” (FFaFitNPotU) with a slight detour to talk about his book “The Road to Reality” (TRtR), as there are some interesting contrasts, and similarities. TRtR, I see as a fascinating attempt to teach a large swathe of mathematics and physics from the ground up (wherever the ground really is). The book is some 1000 pages long, and goes at quite a pace through a number of very complicated topics, but it is enough, I believe, for the keen high school student to get an idea of some of the most important areas of mathematical physics.…