FACES OF MATHEMATICS

Oliver Penrose was Professor of Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University until his notional retirement in 1994. He has remained active in research, principally in the area of statistical mechanics, and in the study of phase transitions. He combines his research work in mathematical physics with more metaphysical interests in the direction of time and the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

"The image appears in a camera after you've clicked the shutter, not before. The film and the outside don't interact at first: then you open the shutter and there's an interaction. Before the interaction there was no correlation, and afterwards there was a correlation between the thing you've photographed and the captured image. It is similar to remembering: we remember the past, and not the future.

"When I do mathematics, I like to do something that's related to physics in some way. I'm not all that interested in pure mathematics, except that sometimes something interesting comes up in pure mathematics which I like to learn about for its own interest. But I usually like to work on something that has a connection with a physics problem.

"In chess, the pieces move around and interlock with each other, a bit like a machine: a bit like watching a machine work, a steam engine or something like that. Mathematics is a bit like that too: the pieces interlock: they're a little bit more abstract, you can't always see them as you can the pieces on a chessboard, but it is somehow similar."