Penrose is a British mathematician and physicist who worked with Stephen Hawking on many matters relating to the general theory of relativity, black holes, and other areas of theoretical physics. In 1965 he showed that a collapsing star would collapse into infinite density in zero space—into something called a singularity. Working together, the two produced a paper in 1970 that stated there must have been a big bang singularity. With John Wheeler, he showed that all black holes must be spherical. He discussed with Hawking his idea that the black hole’s event horizon was also its area.