AN OXFORD professor who shared an international award with Stephen Hawking has given a presentation to students at an East Hampshire school.
The theatre in Bedales was packed when Sir Roger Penrose delivered the school’s annual Science Eckersley lecture to an audience of teachers, students and parents.
The Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematic at the University of Oxford has a strong link with the venue as his mother was head girl at the Steep school in 1919.
The guest speaker, who shared the 1988 Wolf Prize for Physics with Hawking, mesmerised the audience with a talk which included a discussion about consciousness, infinity, life, quantum mechanics, gravity, general relatively and Schrodinger’s cat.
“It’s not often that one plays host to a thinker who has radically changed the intellectual landscape in their field,” said Bedales’ Head of Sciences Emily Seeber.
“But in hosting Sir Roger Penrose we had the opportunity to hear about how he has challenged thinking in mathematics, physics, philosophy and beyond.”
She added: “He was also extraordinarily moved by the places where his mother would have lived and studied long before he was born, as she attended Bedales 100 years ago.”