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PENROSE TILING

Nobel Prizewinner Immortalized in Main Lecture Hall

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Two men in the foyer of the Audimax © Archiv​/​TU Dortmund
Roger Penrose in the foyer of the Main Lecture Hall with Professor Albert Klein, acting rector at that time.

The floor in the foyer of the Main Lecture Hall is a mathematical masterpiece. It is made of two rhombus-like shapes which, fitted together, repeat specific sub-patterns. These are, however, aperiodic and without any recognizable regularity. It was Sir Roger Penrose, physics professor, who discovered the pattern in 1974 – the scientist who has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics, as the Nobel Committee recently announced. The tiling has decorated the foyer of TU Dortmund University’s building since 1994. For its inauguration, Penrose visited in person what was then the University of Dortmund.