Sir Roger Penrose is a pathbreaking theoretical physicist whose work on black holes in 1965 won him this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, which he shared with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez. The prize committee commended him for “the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.” He also shared the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics with Stephen Hawking. Penrose also discovered a remarkable group of geometric entities that came to be called Penrose tiles. He is also a hugely effective populariser of his subject: his series of books carrying his meticulous and lucid illustrations of complicated ideas became best-sellers and have influenced a large number of younger scientists. For the past several years, he has turned to questions about the human mind. Along with anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, Penrose has proposed a quantum-mechanical model for human consciousness. Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College,Oxford.