Published biographies
Patchen Barss; The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius
Patchen Barss is a 2021 – 2022 Fellow
When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a “world behind the world” of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world’s most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists.
Damion Searls; The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing
Damion Searls is a 2012 – 2013 Fellow
In 1917, working alone in a remote Swiss asylum, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach devised an experiment to probe the human mind: a set of ten carefully designed inkblots. For years he had grappled with the theories of Freud and Jung while also absorbing the aesthetic movements of the day, from Futurism to Dadaism.