The two-dimensional equivalent is known as Penrose tiling (see picture above), after Sir Roger Penrose, the mathematician who put this form of geometry on a formal footing.

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The award is one of the major publishing events of the year in the UK. Previous winners have included Bill Bryson, Stephen J Gould, Roger Penrose, and Stephen Hawking.

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The Royal Society award is one of the major publishing events of the year in the UK. Previous winners have included Bill Bryson, Stephen J Gould, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking.

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Roger Penrose, for example, has long been on record as arguing that it is quantum mechanics, not general relativity, that needs to be modified in order to successfully develop a grand unified theory.

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There are some physicists out there, such as Roger Penrose, who have hypothesized that our consciousness is, in fact, the result of quantum mechanical processes which might make a strong AI impossible.

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One of his great achievements since then, together with mathematician Roger Penrose, has been to prove that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity means space and time has a beginning in the "Big Bang" and ends in black holes.

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