Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff – Consciousness Chronicles 4

Conscious Pictures

For the full interview: http://consciousnesschronicles.com

Sir Roger Penrose is an English mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science. He is the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, as well as an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. Penrose is known for his work in mathematical physics, in particular for his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He has received several prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contribution to our understanding of the universe.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness. He received his BS degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his MD degree from Hahnemann University Hospital, where he studied before it became part of the Drexel University College of Medicine. He took an internship at the Tucson Medical Center in 1973. From 1975 onwards, he has spent the whole of his career at the University of Arizona, becoming professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Psychology and associate director for the Center for Consciousness Studies, both in 1999, and finally Emeritus professor for Anesthesiology and Psychology in 2003.

Penrose and Hameroff teamed up in the mid-1990s to develop highly controversial theory of consciousness known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch. OR), which proposed that consciousness is a quantum collapse occurring in complex substructures of neurons know as microtubules. This theory attracted much criticism over the years, but has recently been given a significant boost following the dramatic discovery of measurable quantum effects in microtubules by quantum biologist Anirban Bandyopadhyay, who is also featured in Chronicles 4.

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