Oliver Penrose

{{Short description|British theoretical physicist (born 1929)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2016}}

{{Use British English|date=December 2016}}

{{Infobox scientist

|name = Oliver Penrose

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|birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1929|06|06}}

|birth_place = Marylebone, London, England

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|nationality = British

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|fields = Physics

|workplaces = Imperial College, London
Open University
Heriot-Watt University

|alma_mater = University College, London
King's College, Cambridge

|doctoral_advisor = H N V Temperley

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|known_for = {{no wrap|Bose–Einstein condensation in liquid helium}}
Direction of time
Kinetics of phase transitions
Foundations of statistical mechanics
Penrose criterion

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|awards = FRS (1987)

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|website = {{URL|https://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~oliver/}}

|footnotes = He is the brother of Roger Penrose, Jonathan Penrose, and Shirley Hodgson, and son of Lionel Penrose, and grandson of J. Doyle Penrose and John Beresford Leathes. He is the nephew of Roland Penrose and cousin of Antony Penrose.

}}

Oliver Penrose {{postnominals|country=GBR|FRS|FRSE}} (born 6 June 1929) is a British theoretical physicist.[https://books.google.com/books?id=JxD6cMLYMj4C&dq=%22Oliver+Penrose%22&pg=PA77 "Notes"], The rainbow and the worm: the physics of organisms by Mae-Wan Ho, World Scientific, 1998, Pg. 77

He is the son of the scientist Lionel Penrose and brother of the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, chess Grandmaster Jonathan Penrose, and geneticist Shirley Hodgson.[https://books.google.com/books?id=GVwMapdXfnYC&dq=%22Oliver+Penrose%22&pg=PA2 Image processing III: mathematical methods, algorithms and applications by Jonathan M. Blackledge and Martin J. Turner, Horwood Publishing, 2001, Pg. 2][https://books.google.com/books?id=DKiReQsfT74C&dq=%22Oliver+Penrose%22&pg=PA119 "The Mandelbrot Set"], Why Beliefs Matter: Reflections on the Nature of Science by E. Brian Davies, Oxford University Press, 2010, Pg. 119, {{ISBN|0191591564}} He was associated with the Open University for seventeen years and was a Professor of Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh from 1986 until his retirement in 1994. He has the title of Professor Emeritus at Heriot-Watt, and remains active in research there. His topics of interest include statistical mechanics,[https://books.google.com/books?id=WG9WQwAACAAJ&q=%22Oliver+Penrose%22 "Papers dedicated to Oliver Penrose on the occasion of his 65th birthday"], Volume 77, Issues 1–2 of Journal of Statistical Physics phase transitions in metals and the physical chemistry of surfactants. His concept of off-diagonal long-range order is important to the present understanding of superfluids and superconductors. Other more abstract topics in which he has worked include understanding the physical basis for the direction of time and interpretations of quantum mechanics.[https://books.google.com/books?id=2UL6BMPvFkwC&dq=%22Oliver+Penrose%22&pg=PA257 "Quantum Mechanics and Real Events"], Quantum chaos—quantum measurement by Predrag Cvitanović, Ian Percival, Andreas Wirzba and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Scientific Affairs Division, Springer, 1992, Pg. 257[https://books.google.com/books?id=3U2HSMHsouMC&dq=%22Penrose%22&pg=PA465-IA27 "The physical review—the first hundred years:"] a selection of seminal papers and commentaries, Volume 1 by H. Henry Stroke, Springer, 1995