2024/07/06

Fred Hoyle - Wikipedia

Fred Hoyle - Wikipedia


Fred Hoyle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fred Hoyle
Born24 June 1915
Died20 August 2001 (aged 86)
Bournemouth, England
Alma materEmmanuel College, Cambridge
Known forCoining the phrase 'Big Bang'
Steady-state theory
Stellar nucleosynthesis theory
Triple-alpha process
Panspermia
Hoyle state
Hoyle's fallacy
Hoyle's model
B2FH paper
Hoyle–Narlikar theory
Bondi–Hoyle–Lyttleton accretion
Spouse
Barbara Clark
 
(m. 1939)
[2]
Children
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy
InstitutionsSt John's College, Cambridge
Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Academic advisorsRudolf Peierls
Maurice Pryce
Philip Worsley Wood
Doctoral studentsJohn Moffat
Chandra Wickramasinghe
Cyril Domb
Jayant Narlikar
Leon Mestel
Peter Alan Sweet
Sverre Aarseth
Other notable studentsPaul C. W. Davies
Douglas Gough

Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory (a term coined by him on BBC Radio) in favor of the "steady-state model", and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth.[3][4][5] He spent most of his working life at St John's College, Cambridge and served as the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge.

Hoyle also wrote science fiction novels, short stories and radio plays, co-created television serials, and co-authored twelve books with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle.

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Hoyle was born near Bingley in GilsteadWest Riding of Yorkshire, England.[6] His father Ben Hoyle was a violinist and worked in the wool trade in Bradford, and served as a machine gunner in the First World War.[7] His mother, Mabel Pickard, had studied music at the Royal College of Music in London and later worked as a cinema pianist.[7] Hoyle was educated at Bingley Grammar School and read mathematics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.[8] As a youth, he sang in the choir at the local Anglican church.[9][10]

In 1936, Hoyle shared the Mayhew Prize with George Stanley Rushbrooke.

Career[edit]

In late 1940, Hoyle left Cambridge to go to Portsmouth to work for the Admiralty on radar research, for example devising a method to get the altitude of incoming aeroplanes. He was also put in charge of countermeasures against the radar-guided guns found on the Graf Spee after its scuttling in the River Plate.[11] Britain's radar project was a large-scale operation, and was probably the inspiration for the large British project in Hoyle's novel The Black Cloud. Two colleagues in this war work were Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, and the three had many discussions on cosmology. The radar work involved several trips to North America, where he took the opportunity to visit astronomers. On one trip to the US, he learned about supernovae at Caltech and Mount Palomar and, in Canada, the nuclear physics of plutonium implosion and explosion, noticed some similarity between the two and started thinking about supernova nucleosynthesis. He had an intuition at the time "I will make a name for myself if this works out" (he published his prescient and groundbreaking paper in 1954). He also formed a group at Cambridge exploring stellar nucleosynthesis in ordinary stars and was bothered by the paucity of stellar carbon production in existing models. He noticed that one existing process would be made a billion times more productive if the carbon-12 nucleus had a resonance at 7.7 MeV, but nuclear physicists at the time omitted such an observed value. On another trip, he visited the nuclear physics group at Caltech, spent a few months of sabbatical there and persuaded them against their scepticism to find the Hoyle state in carbon-12, from which a full theory of stellar nucleosynthesis was developed, co-authored by Hoyle and members of the Caltech group.[12]

blue plaque at Bingley Grammar School commemorating Hoyle

In 1945, after the war ended, Hoyle returned to Cambridge University as a lecturer at St John's College, Cambridge (where he had been a Fellow since 1939).[13] Hoyle's Cambridge years, 1945–1973, saw him rise to the top of world astrophysics theory, on the basis of a startling originality of ideas covering a wide range of topics. In 1958, Hoyle was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in Cambridge University. In 1967, he became the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (subsequently renamed the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge), where his innovative leadership quickly led to this institution becoming one of the premier groups in the world for theoretical astrophysics. In 1971, he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. He chose the subject "Astronomical Instruments and their Construction".[14] Hoyle was knighted in 1972.

Although the occupant of two distinguished offices, by 1972 Hoyle had become unhappy with his life in Cambridge. A dispute over election to a professorial chair led to Hoyle resigning as Plumian professor in 1972. The following year he also resigned the directorship of the Institute. Explaining his actions, he later wrote: "I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win. The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prevent one ever establishing a directed policy - key decisions can be upset by ill-informed and politically motivated committees. To be effective in this system one must for ever be watching one's colleagues, almost like a Robespierre spy system. If one does so, then of course little time is left for any real science."[15]

After leaving Cambridge, Hoyle wrote several popular science and science fiction books, as well as presenting lectures around the world, partly to provide a means of support. Hoyle was still a member of the joint policy committee (since 1967), during the planning stage for the 150-inch Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. He became chairman of the Anglo-Australian Telescope board in 1973, and presided at its inauguration in 1974 by Charles, Prince of Wales.

Decline and death[edit]

After his resignation from Cambridge, Hoyle moved to the Lake District and occupied his time with treks across the moors, writing books, visiting research centres around the world, and working on science ideas (that have been largely rejected). On 24 November 1997, while hiking across moorlands in west Yorkshire, near his childhood home in Gilstead, Hoyle fell into a steep ravine called Shipley Glen. He was located about 12 hours later by a party using search dogs. He was hospitalised for two months with a broken shoulder bone, and pneumonia and kidney problems, both resulting from hypothermia. Thereafter he entered a marked decline, suffering from memory and mental agility problems. In 2001, he suffered a series of strokes and died in Bournemouth on 20 August of that year.

Views and contributions[edit]

Origin of nucleosynthesis[edit]

Hoyle authored the first two research papers ever published on synthesis of chemical elements heavier than helium by stellar nuclear reactions. The first of these[16] in 1946 showed that cores of stars will evolve to temperatures of billions of degrees, much hotter than temperatures considered for thermonuclear origin of stellar power in main-sequence stars. Hoyle showed that at such high temperatures the element iron can become much more abundant than other heavy elements owing to thermal equilibrium among nuclear particles, explaining the high natural abundance of iron. This idea would later be called the e Process.[17] Hoyle's second foundational nucleosynthesis publication,[18] published in 1954, showed that the elements between carbon and iron cannot be synthesized by such equilibrium processes. He attributed those elements to specific nuclear fusion reactions between abundant constituents in concentric shells of evolved massive, pre-supernova stars. This startlingly modern picture is the accepted paradigm today for the supernova nucleosynthesis of these primary elements. In the mid-1950s, Hoyle became the leader of a group of talented experimental and theoretical physicists who met in Cambridge: William Alfred FowlerMargaret Burbidge, and Geoffrey Burbidge. This group systematized basic ideas of how all the chemical elements in our universe were created, with this now being a field called nucleosynthesis. Famously, in 1957, this group produced the B2FH paper (known for the initials of the four authors) in which the field of nucleosynthesis was organized into complementary nuclear processes. They added much new material on the synthesis of heavy elements by neutron-capture reactions, the so-called s process and the r process. So influential did the B2FH paper become that for the remainder of the twentieth century it became the default citation of almost all researchers wishing to cite an accepted origin for nucleosynthesis theory, and as a result, the path-breaking Hoyle 1954 paper fell into obscurity. Historical research in the 21st century [19][20] has brought Hoyle's 1954 paper back to scientific prominence. Those historical arguments were first presented to a gathering of nucleosynthesis experts attending a 2007 conference at Caltech organized after the deaths of both Fowler and Hoyle to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of B2FH. Ironically the B2FH paper did not review Hoyle's 1954 supernova-shells attribution of the origin of elements between silicon and iron despite Hoyle's co-authorship of B2FH. Based on his many personal discussions with Hoyle [21] Donald D. Clayton has attributed this seemingly inexplicable oversight in B2FH to the lack of proofreading by Hoyle of the draft composed at Caltech in 1956 by G.R. Burbidge and E.M. Burbidge.[22]

The second of Hoyle's nucleosynthesis papers also introduced an interesting use of the anthropic principle, which was not then known by that name. In trying to work out the steps of stellar nucleosynthesis, Hoyle calculated that one particular nuclear reaction, the triple-alpha process, which generates carbon from helium, would require the carbon nucleus to have a very specific resonance energy and spin for it to work. The large amount of carbon in the universe, which makes it possible for carbon-based life-forms of any kind to exist, demonstrated to Hoyle that this nuclear reaction must work. Based on this notion, Hoyle therefore predicted the values of the energy, the nuclear spin and the parity of the compound state in the carbon nucleus formed by three alpha particles (helium nuclei), which was later borne out by experiment.[23]

This energy level, while needed to produce carbon in large quantities, was statistically very unlikely to fall where it does in the scheme of carbon energy levels. Hoyle later wrote:

Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

— Fred Hoyle[24]

His co-worker William Alfred Fowler eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 (with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar), but Hoyle's original contribution was overlooked by the electors, and many were surprised that such a notable astronomer missed out.[25] Fowler himself in an autobiographical sketch affirmed Hoyle's pioneering efforts:

The concept of nucleosynthesis in stars was first established by Hoyle in 1946. This provided a way to explain the existence of elements heavier than helium in the universe, basically by showing that critical elements such as carbon could be generated in stars and then incorporated in other stars and planets when that star "dies". The new stars formed now start off with these heavier elements and even heavier elements are formed from them. Hoyle theorized that other rarer elements could be explained by supernovas, the giant explosions which occasionally occur throughout the universe, whose temperatures and pressures would be required to create such elements.

— William Fowler[26]

Rejection of the Big Bang[edit]

While having no argument with the Lemaître theory (later confirmed by Edwin Hubble's observations) that the universe was expanding, Hoyle disagreed on its interpretation. He found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be pseudoscience, resembling arguments for a creator, "for it's an irrational process, and can't be described in scientific terms" (see Kalam cosmological argument).[27] Instead, Hoyle, along with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi (with whom he had worked on radar in the Second World War), in 1948 began to argue for the universe as being in a "steady state" and formulated their Steady State theory. The theory tried to explain how the universe could be eternal and essentially unchanging while still having the galaxies we observe moving away from each other. The theory hinged on the creation of matter between galaxies over time, so that even though galaxies get further apart, new ones that develop between them fill the space they leave. The resulting universe is in a "steady state" in the same manner that a flowing river is—the individual water molecules are moving away but the overall river remains the same.

The theory was one alternative to the Big Bang which, like the Big Bang, agreed with key observations of the day, namely Hubble's red shift observations, and Hoyle was a strong critic of the Big Bang. He coined the term "Big Bang" on BBC radio's Third Programme broadcast on 28 March 1949.[28] It was said by George Gamow and his opponents that Hoyle intended to be pejorative, and the script from which he read aloud was interpreted by his opponents to be "vain, one-sided, insulting, not worthy of the BBC".[29] Hoyle explicitly denied that he was being insulting and said it was just a striking image meant to emphasize the difference between the two theories for the radio audience.[30] In another BBC interview, he said, "The reason why scientists like the "Big Bang" is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis. It is deep within the psyche of most scientists to believe in the first page of Genesis".[31]

Hoyle had a famously heated argument with Martin Ryle of the Cavendish Radio Astronomy Group about Hoyle's steady state theory, which somewhat restricted collaboration between the Cavendish group and the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy during the 1960s.[32]

Hoyle, unlike Gold and Bondi, offered an explanation for the appearance of new matter by postulating the existence of what he dubbed the "creation field", or just the "C-field", which had negative pressure in order to be consistent with the conservation of energy and drive the expansion of the universe. This C-field is the same as the later "de Sitter solution" for cosmic inflation, but the C-field model acts much slower than the de Sitter inflation model.[33] They jointly argued that continuous creation was no more inexplicable than the appearance of the entire universe from nothing, although it had to be done on a regular basis. In the end, mounting observational evidence convinced most cosmologists that the steady-state model was incorrect and that the Big Bang theory agreed better with observations, although Hoyle continued to support and develop his theory. In 1993, in an attempt to explain some of the evidence against the steady-state theory, he presented a modified version called "quasi-steady state cosmology" (QSS), but the theory is not widely accepted.

The evidence that resulted in the Big Bang's victory over the steady-state model included discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960s, and the distribution of "young galaxies" and quasars throughout the Universe in the 1980s indicate a more consistent age estimate of the universe. Hoyle died in 2001 having never accepted the validity of the Big Bang theory.[34]

How, in the big-bang cosmology, is the microwave background explained? Despite what supporters of big-bang cosmology claim, it is not explained. The supposed explanation is nothing but an entry in the gardener's catalogue of hypothesis that constitutes the theory. Had observation given 27 Kelvins instead of 2.7 Kelvins for the temperature, then 27 kelvins would have been entered in the catalogue. Or 0.27 Kelvins. Or anything at all.

— Hoyle, 1994[35]

Theory of gravity[edit]

Together with Narlikar, Hoyle developed a particle theory in the 1960s, the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity. It made predictions that were roughly the same as Einstein's general relativity, but it incorporated Mach's Principle, which Einstein had tried but failed to incorporate in his theory. The Hoyle-Narlikar theory fails several tests, including consistency with the microwave background. It was motivated by their belief in the steady-state model of the universe.

Rejection of Earth-based abiogenesis[edit]

In his later years, Hoyle became a staunch critic of theories of abiogenesis to explain the origin of life on Earth. With Chandra Wickramasinghe, Hoyle promoted the hypothesis that the first life on Earth began in space, spreading through the universe via panspermia, and that evolution on Earth is influenced by a steady influx of viruses arriving via comets. His belief that comets had a significant percentage of organic compounds was well ahead of his time, as the dominant views in the 1970s and 1980s were that comets largely consisted of water-ice, and the presence of organic compounds was then highly controversial. Wickramasinghe wrote in 2003: "In the highly polarized polemic between Darwinism and creationism, our position is unique. Although we do not align ourselves with either side, both sides treat us as opponents. Thus we are outsiders with an unusual perspective—and our suggestion for a way out of the crisis has not yet been considered."[36]

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe advanced several instances where they say outbreaks of illnesses on Earth are of extraterrestrial origins, including the 1918 flu pandemic, and certain outbreaks of polio and mad cow disease. For the 1918 flu pandemic, they hypothesized that cometary dust brought the virus to Earth simultaneously at multiple locations—a view almost universally dismissed by experts on this pandemic. In 1982, Hoyle presented Evolution from Space for the Royal Institution's Omni Lecture. After considering what he thought of as a very remote possibility of Earth-based abiogenesis he concluded:

If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of...

— Fred Hoyle[37]

Published in his 1982/1984 books Evolution from Space (co-authored with Chandra Wickramasinghe), Hoyle calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell without panspermia was one in 1040,000. Since the number of atoms in the known universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (1080), he argued that Earth as life's place of origin could be ruled out. He claimed:

The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.

Though Hoyle declared himself an atheist,[38] this apparent suggestion of a guiding hand led him to the conclusion that "a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and ... there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."[39] He would go on to compare the random emergence of even the simplest cell without panspermia to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein" and to compare the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cubes simultaneously.[40] This is known as "the junkyard tornado",[41] or "Hoyle's Fallacy". Those who advocate the intelligent design (ID) philosophy sometimes cite Hoyle's work in this area to support the claim that the universe was fine tuned to allow intelligent life to be possible.

Other opinions[edit]

While Hoyle was well-regarded for his works on nucleosynthesis and science popularization, he held positions on a wide range of scientific issues that were in direct opposition to the prevailing theories of the scientific community.[3] Paul Davies describes how he "loved his maverick personality and contempt for orthodoxy", quoting Hoyle as saying "I don't care what they think" about his theories on discrepant redshift, and "it is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right".[42]

Hoyle often expressed anger against the labyrinthine and petty politics at Cambridge and frequently feuded with members and institutions of all levels of the British astronomy community, leading to his resignation from Cambridge in September 1971 over the way he thought Donald Lynden-Bell was chosen to replace retiring professor Roderick Oliver Redman behind his back.[43] According to biographer Simon Mitton, Hoyle was crestfallen because he felt that his colleagues at Cambridge were unsupportive.[3]

In addition to his views on steady state theory and panspermia, Hoyle also supported the following controversial hypotheses and speculations:

  • The correlation of flu epidemics with the sunspot cycle, with epidemics occurring at the minimum of the cycle. The idea was that flu contagion was scattered in the interstellar medium and reached Earth only when the solar wind had minimum power.[44][45][46][47]
  • Two fossil Archaeopteryx were man-made fakes.[48]
  • The theory of abiogenic petroleum, held by Hoyle and by Thomas Gold, where natural hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) are explained as the result of deep carbon deposits, instead of fossilized organic material. This theory is dismissed by the mainstream petroleum geochemistry community.[49]
  • In his 1977 book On Stonehenge, Hoyle supported Gerald Hawkins's proposal that the fifty-six Aubrey holes at Stonehenge were used as a system for neolithic Britons to predict eclipses, using them in the daily positioning of marker stones. Using the Aubrey holes for predicting lunar eclipses was originally proposed by Gerald Hawkins in his book of the subject Stonehenge Decoded (1965).

Nobel Prize for Physics[edit]

Hoyle was also at the centre of two unrelated controversies involving the politics for selecting recipients of the Nobel Prize for Physics. The first arose when the 1974 prize went in part to Antony Hewish for his leading role in the discovery of pulsars. Hoyle made an off-the-cuff remark to a reporter in Montreal that "Yes, Jocelyn Bell was the actual discoverer, not Hewish, who was her supervisor, so she should have been included." This remark received widespread international coverage. Worried about being misunderstood, Hoyle carefully[50] composed a letter of explanation to The Times.[25]

The 1983 prize went in part to William Alfred Fowler "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe" despite Hoyle having been the inventor of the theory of nucleosynthesis in the stars with two research papers[51] published shortly after WWII. So some suspicion arose that Hoyle was denied the third share of this prize because of his earlier public disagreement with the 1974 award.[52] British scientist Harry Kroto later said that the Nobel Prize is not just an award for a piece of work, but a recognition of a scientist's overall reputation and Hoyle's championing many disreputable and disproven ideas may have invalidated him.[25][53] In Nature, editor John Maddox called it "shameful" that Fowler had been rewarded with a Nobel prize and Hoyle had not.[53]

Media appearances[edit]

Hoyle appeared in a series of radio talks on astronomy for the BBC in the 1950s;[54] these were collected in the book The Nature of the Universe,[55] and he went on to write a number of other popular science books.

In the play Sur la route de Montalcino, the character of Fred Hoyle confronts Georges Lemaître on a fictional journey to the Vatican in 1957.[56]

Hoyle appeared in the 1973 short film Take the World From Another Point of View.[57]

In the 2004 television movie Hawking, Fred Hoyle is played by Peter Firth. In the movie, Stephen Hawking (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) publicly confronts Hoyle at a Royal Society lecture in summer 1964, about a mistake he found in his latest publication.

Honours[edit]

A statue of Fred Hoyle at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

Awards

Named after him

Memorabilia[edit]

The Fred Hoyle Collection at St John's College Library contains "a pair of walking boots, five boxes of photographs, two ice axes, some dental X-rays, a telescope, ten large film reels and an unpublished opera" in addition to 150 document boxes of papers.[65]

Bibliography[edit]

Non-fiction[edit]

  • The Nature of the Universe – a series of broadcast lectures, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1950 (early use of the Big Bang phrase)
  • Frontiers of Astronomy, Heinemann Education Books Ltd, London, 1955. The Internet Archive. HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0060027605
  • Burbidge, E.M., Burbidge, G.R., Fowler, W.A. and Hoyle, F., "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" Archived 24 June 2016 at the Wayback MachineRevs. Mod. Physics 29:547–650, 1957, the famous B2FH paper after their initials, for which Hoyle is most famous among professional cosmologists.
  • Astronomy, A history of man's investigation of the universe, Crescent Books, Inc., London 1962, LCCN 62-14108
  • Of men and galaxies, Seattle University of Washington, 1964, ASIN B0087VKR70
  • Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1965, LCCN 65-20996
  • Nicolaus Copernicus, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., London, p. 78, 1973
  • Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course, 1975, ISBN 0716703513
  • Energy or Extinction? The case for nuclear energy, 1977, Heinemann Educational Books Limited, ISBN 0435544306. In this provocative book Hoyle establishes the dependence of Western civilization on energy consumption and predicts that nuclear fission as a source of energy is essential for its survival.
  • Ten Faces of the Universe, 1977, W.H. Freeman and Company (San Francisco), ISBN 071670384X0716703831
  • On Stonehenge, 1977, London : Heinemann Educational, ISBN 978-0435329587; San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, ISBN 07167036450716703637 pbk.
  • Lifecloud – The Origin of Life in the Universe, Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe C., J.M. Dent & Sons, 1978. ISBN 0460043358
  • Diseases from Space (with Chandra Wickramasinghe) (J.M. Dent, London, 1979)[66]
  • Commonsense in Nuclear Energy, Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle, 1980, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., ISBN 0435544322
  • The big bang in astronomy, New Scientist 92(1280):527, 19 November 1981.
  • Ice, the Ultimate Human Catastrophe,1981, ISBN 0826400647 [67] Snippet view from Google Books
  • The Intelligent Universe, 1983
  • From Grains to Bacteria, Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe N.C., University College Cardiff Press, ISBN 0906449642, 1984
  • Evolution from space (the Omni lecture) and other papers on the origin of life 1982, ISBN 0894900838
  • Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, 1984, ISBN 0671492632
  • Viruses from Space, 1986, ISBN 0906449936
  • With Jayant Narlikar and Chandra Wickramasinghe, The extragalactic universe: an alternative view, Nature 346:807–812, 30 August 1990.
  • The Origin of the Universe and the Origin of Religion,1993, ISBN 1559210834 [68]
  • Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (autobiography) Oxford University Press 1994, ISBN 0198500602
  • Mathematics of Evolution, (1987) University College Cardiff Press, (1999) Acorn Enterprises LLC., ISBN 0966993403
  • With G. Burbridge and Narlikar J.V. A Different Approach to Cosmology, Cambridge University Press 2000, ISBN 0521662230

Science fiction[edit]

A mosaic by Boris Anrep depicting Fred Hoyle as a steeplejack climbing to the stars, with a book under his arm, in the National Gallery, London.

Hoyle also wrote science fiction. In his first novel, The Black Cloud, most intelligent life in the universe takes the form of interstellar gas clouds; they are surprised to learn that intelligent life can also form on planets. He wrote a television series, A for Andromeda, which was also published as a novel. His play Rockets in Ursa Major had a professional production at the Mermaid Theatre in 1962.

  • The Black Cloud, 1957
  • Ossian's Ride, 1959
  • A for Andromeda, 1962 (co-authored with John Elliot)
  • Fifth Planet, 1963 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • Andromeda Breakthrough, 1965 (co-authored with John Elliot)
  • October the First Is Too Late, 1966
  • Element 79 (collection of short stories), 1967
  • Rockets in Ursa Major, 1969 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • Seven Steps to the Sun, 1970 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Inferno, 1973 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Molecule Men and the Monster of Loch Ness, 1973 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • Into Deepest Space, 1974 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Incandescent Ones, 1977 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Westminster Disaster, 1978 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle and Edited by Barbara Hoyle)
  • The Frozen Planet of Azuron, 1982 (Ladybird Books, co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Energy Pirate, 1982 (Ladybird Books, co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Planet of Death, 1982 (Ladybird Books, co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • The Giants of Universal Park, 1982 (Ladybird Books, co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
  • Comet Halley, 1985

Most of these are independent of each other. Andromeda Breakthrough is a sequel to A for Andromeda and Into Deepest Space is a sequel to Rockets in Ursa Major. The four Ladybird Books are intended for children.

Some stories of the collection Element 79 are fantasy, in particular "Welcome to Slippage City" and "The Judgement of Aphrodite". Both introduce mythological characters.

The Telegraph (UK) called him a "masterful" science fiction writer.[34]

References[edit]

  1. Jump up to:a b c Burbidge, G. (2003). "Sir Fred Hoyle. 24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001. Elected FRS 1957"Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society49: 213–247. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2003.0013.
  2. ^ Sullivan, Walter (22 August 2001). "Fred Hoyle Dies at 86; Opposed 'Big Bang' but Named It"The New York TimesArchived from the original on 12 April 2020. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
  3. Jump up to:a b c Mitton, Simon (2011). "Chapter 12: Stones, Bones, Bugs and Accidents". Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science. Cambridge University Press.
  4. ^ Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Stephen Hawking: Quest For A Theory of EverythingFranklin WattsISBN 055329895X.
  5. ^ Jane Gregory, Fred Hoyle's Universe, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0191578460
  6. ^ "Sir Fred Hoyle". Hoyle.org.uk. Archived from the original on 17 September 2011. Retrieved 15 September 2011.
  7. Jump up to:a b "Hoyle's Youth". St. John's College University of Cambridge.
  8. ^ Moore, Patrick (2004). "Oxford DNB article: Hoyle, Sir Fred"Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Dictionary of National Biographydoi:10.1093/ref:odnb/76123. Retrieved 10 August 2009. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. ^ "Sir Fred was kindest of men, says sister"Bradford Telegraph and Argus. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  10. ^ "History of the Parish". 2 February 2017. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  11. ^ Simon Mitton, Fred Hoyle, a Life in Science, Cambridge University Press (2011).
  12. ^ Jane Gregory, Fred Hoyle's Universe, World Scientific Pub, 2003
  13. ^ Fred Hoyle Project, St John's College, Cambridge
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  25. Jump up to:a b c McKie, Robin (2 October 2010). "Fred Hoyle: the scientist whose rudeness cost him a Nobel prize"The Guardian.
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  27. ^ Quentin Smith, A Big Bang Cosmological Argument For God's NonexistenceFaith and Philosophy. April 1992. Volume 9, No. 2, pp. 217–237
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  63. ^ Indian scientists discover three new species of bacteria[permanent dead link]. 17 March 2009. The Indian Express.
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  65. ^ "Centre for Material Texts, Blog Archive, The Fred Hoyle Collection at St John's College Library". Archived from the original on 30 June 2016. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  66. ^ Diseases from space. J.M. Dent. 1980. OCLC 6087814.
  67. ^ Hoyle, Fred (2006). Ice: The Ultimate Human Catastrophe. Continuum. ISBN 978-0826400642. Retrieved 15 September 2011.
  68. ^ "Scribd.com". Scribd.com. Archived from the original on 22 October 2012. Retrieved 15 September 2011.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

Beatrice Tinsley, A Very Luminous Star | by Aayushi Verma | Medium

Beatrice Tinsley, A Very Luminous Star | by Aayushi Verma | Medium

Beatrice Tinsley, A Very Luminous Star

This is the first article in my series of ‘Women in Astronomy’ article series, in honour of the International Astronomical Union’s Women and Girls in Astronomy month (February).

Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley was a remarkable astronomer, who against all the difficulties in her life, wholly devoted herself to her passion, cosmology.
Beatrice Tinsley. Image source: Wikipedia.

Beatrice Hill was born in 1941 in Chester, the United Kingdom, and her family later on emigrated to Christchurch, New Zealand, then soon moved to New Plymouth. Beatrice was a star student (no pun intended), and excelled in her schooling years, especially high school. At New Plymouth Girls’ High School, Beatrice not only had a distinguished academic record in all her subjects, but was also proficient in playing the piano as well as violin. She won several prizes during her time at school, acknowledging her academic and musical prowess, and perhaps her ultimate high school achievement was that she was the Dux of her school. In addition, she won a scholarship for university in 1957 (her final year of high school).
Modern-day city of New Plymouth, with Mount Taranaki in the background. Image source: Wikipedia.

Beatrice Hill studied a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, and she thrived. She was involved in the community, taking part in many extracurriculars, whilst simultaneously excelling in her studies. During this time period, she also got married to her classmate, Brian Tinsley. After graduating with her Bachelor of Science in Physics with straight A’s, she did her Master’s degree. She completed her Master’s in 1962, having gotten all straight A’s and winning all the prizes available in her year.
Modern-day Arts Centre of Christchurch. Previously the location of the University of Canterbury until 1961, the time period in which Beatrice Tinsley studied at the University of Canterbury. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

The next year, Beatrice and Brian moved to Dallas, Texas in the United States of America, where she started her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 1963. UT-A was 600km away from where they lived in Dallas, and so Beatrice had to commute. She drove to Austin on Tuesdays and came back to Dallas on Fridays. She completed her PhD in record time (only 2 years and 2 months), and on a record topic — on the evolution of galaxies. Her thesis, ‘Evolution of galaxies and its significance for cosmology’ challenged many of the then-laws of physics.
The University of Texas at Austin. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

After being awarded her doctorate in 1966, Dr. Beatrice Tinsley worked on presenting her research on galaxy evolution at various conferences. At one such gathering, Beatrice questioned the leading cosmologist of the time, Dr. Allan Sandage, about his theory that the universe is a closed system. This led to an academic rivalry between the two.

Beatrice diligently worked hard the next few years, publishing several pioneering works of research in cosmology, mainly on the evolution of galaxies and stellar evolution. In the meantime, she was also busy with her family, and was also involved with the community. She was even a member of the Richardson Symphony Orchestra! To help support herself and her family, she worked at several institutions for short periods of time, such as a three-month position at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, a six-month position at the University of Maryland in the Department of Astronomy, and a half-time position as an assistant professor of astronomy at UT-A.
California Institute of Technology, otherwise known as Caltech, in Pasadena, California. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

With ground-breaking research in the field of cosmology, it is evident that Beatrice Tinsley received academic awards and recognition. For example, she was awarded the Annie J. Cannon Award in 1974 for her ‘outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher’ for her research on galaxy evolution.

However, Beatrice’s personal life was strained during this time. She could not get a full-time position at the University of Dallas where Brian was an associate professor, and so in pursuit of better opportunities in the field which she was so passionate about — cosmology — Beatrice left her family in Dallas and took up the position of associate professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in the department of astronomy in 1974. Prior to taking up her position, though, she travelled to Pasadena, California to work on a collaboration with her friend Dr. James Gunn on the life history of stars forming in a galaxy, then took up a six-month position as an assistant research astronomer and lecturer at Lick Observatory in Santa Cruz, California.
The C. Donald Shane 3.0m telescope at Lick Observatory, San Jose, California. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Beatrice flourished at Yale, where she was a full-time theoretical astrophysicist/cosmologist. She happily worked on research on various topics, such as star formation, stellar evolution, and galaxy evolution. One of her important findings of her stellar evolution in galaxies research was that galaxies are getting dimmer with age, instead of them having constant luminosity. This research was important because it helped in understanding the expansion rate of the universe.
Yale University. Image source: Pixabay.

Another of her important research papers, ‘An unbound universe’ was revolutionary because she showed that the universe is open and hence expands forever, contrary to the leading-edge research of the time (including Allan Sandage’s research), where it was believed that the universe is closed and will eventually collapse in itself.

Yet another of her innovative research articles focused on showing that galaxy mergers cause star formation. She even organised a conference on ‘The Evolution of Galaxies and Stellar Populations’ in 1977 with her Yale colleague, Dr. Richard Larson. Her crowning achievement was becoming the first female professor of astronomy at Yale in 1978.

Sadly that year, she discovered she had cancer (melanoma). This unfortunate diagnosis did not prevent Beatrice from working on her passion, and in the next few years until she passed away in 1981 at the age of 40, she published several academic papers, many of which are still cited today.

Beatrice Tinsley’s legacy lives on, as she is remembered not only in the astronomical academia world, but also many books, podcasts, prizes, professorships, geographic features, a play, an asteroid and a lecture series are all named after or in honour of Dr. Beatrice Hill Tinsley.

Dr. Beatrice Tinsley is an inspiring female figure. In defiance of all the hardships she faced and the general attitude towards women, she prevailed and made very valuable contributions in the field through her research and her perseverance. She helped the field of cosmology to advance by showing that galaxies aren’t static, rather they evolve as time goes on, for one. She also showed that galaxy mergers can trigger star formations. The implications of Dr. Beatrice Tinsley’s life research are still being used today to help our understanding of the universe.
An image of two galaxies colliding, triggering very luminous star formation. Image source: NASA, Hubble and Spitzer.

Also check out this article on my website at: https://awesomecosmos622671215.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/beatrice-tinsley-a-very-luminous-star/
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The Nature of the Universe : Fred Hoyle : Internet Archive

The Nature of the Universe : Fred Hoyle : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


The Nature of the Universe
by Fred Hoyle

Publication date 1955
Publisher Mentor Book
Collection internetarchivebooks; americana; inlibrary; printdisabled
Contributor Internet Archive
Language English
===
Fred Hoyle had a series of radio programs in England printed in The Nature of the Universe. Sir Frederick "Fred" Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 - 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer and mathematician noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters-in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally coined by him on BBC radio.

 In addition to his work as an astronomer, Hoyle was a writer of science fiction, including a number of books co-written with his son Geoffrey Hoyle. Hoyle spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and served as its director for a number of years. He died in Bournemouth, England, after a series of strokes. Dark Blue Hardcover, Gold writing,142 pages Inside front and back covers has orion and Dark Bay, Mount Wilson Observatory, 12 pages of black and white stellar photos and galaxies.

===

Overlooked No More: Beatrice Tinsley, Astronomer Who Saw the Course of the Universe - The New York Times

Overlooked No More: Beatrice Tinsley, Astronomer Who Saw the Course of the Universe - The New York Times

Overlooked No More: Beatrice Tinsley, Astronomer Who Saw the Course of the Universe

An insurgent who challenged the academic establishment and became a foremost expert on the aging of galaxies, she was eventually forced to choose between family and career.

Beatrice Tinsley at an International Astronomical Union symposium in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1977.Credit...J. Richard Gott
July 18, 2018
Leer en español


Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.


By Dennis Overbye

In 1967 a very prominent astronomer visited Dallas to give a talk. Before he could speak, however, a young woman named Beatrice Tinsley stood up and told the audience that everything they were about to hear was wrong.

Thus began a feud that changed cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe.

On one side was Allan Sandage, arguably the most important astronomer in the world, who was convinced that he was homing in on the fate of the universe — namely, that it was doomed to collapse one distant day, a hundred billion years from now.

On the other side was an outspoken 26-year-old graduate student, who was saying that Sandage had misread the light of distant galaxies and, with it, the fate of the universe.

Sandage was outraged, but history would record that Tinsley won that argument.

In the years ahead, before cancer struck her down on March 23, 1981, at the age of 40, Tinsley would become known as the world’s leading expert on the aging and evolution of galaxies — the gigantic glowing stellar metropolises that are the true citizens of the cosmos.

In her work, which the Princeton astronomer James Gunn called “a real paradigm change,” galaxies went from being considered isolated blobs of starlight to dynamic changeable weather centers of energy and radiation, influencing and being influenced by the cosmos around them.

Tinsley was the sparkplug of a new generation of astronomers and physicists who were using new methods and data to wrest the narrative of the universe from their elders. Friends and colleagues recalled her as passionate about her ideas and the universe and also as a feminist hero to the tiny but growing band of women in astronomy — one who had to pay a steep personal price, in the form of abandoning her family, to follow her stars.

Asteroids, mountains, lectureships and awards have since been named for her, but a lifetime of glass ceilings and rejections left Tinsley often feeling unappreciated.

“She never lost the feeling of fighting the world,” said Richard Larson, a Yale astronomer who became a collaborator and close friend.

Beatrice Muriel Hill was born in Chester, England, on Jan. 27, 1941, and grew up in New Zealand, the middle of three daughters of Jean and Edward Hill. Her father was a clergyman turned politician who became mayor of New Plymouth in New Zealand.

“Beetle,” as her friends and family called her, had a healthy disrespect for authority, which would influence her attitudes toward both science and religion. As she grew up her two loves were music and mathematics.

At the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, she fell under the spell of physics, learning, as quoted in a biographical memoir by her father, “to question everything.” In 1961 she married a fellow physicist and classmate, Brian Tinsley. A year later she emerged with a master’s degree, but could not find work at Canterbury because her husband worked there.

When her husband was recruited to the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies in Dallas — now the University of Texas at Dallas — she followed, but found the situation stultifying. She once caused a minor scandal by refusing to host a faculty tea when it was her turn. In 1964 she enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, the only woman in the program, commuting 400 miles every week.

It was while simulating the effects of the evolution of billions of stars on the overall appearance of galaxies that she crossed swords with Allan Sandage.

The fate of the universe was the big question in cosmology. Would the universe keep expanding forever? Or would the combined gravity of the galaxies eventually pull everything back together, like a handful of rocks tossed back to Earth?

Sandage and others sought to answer that question by looking at how the universe had been expanding in the deep past. He concluded that it was slowing down and would one day fall back together in a Big Crunch. That was about as momentous a prediction as any scientist could ever make.

But the answer depended on the presumption that certain galaxies — egg-shaped agglomerations known as giant ellipticals, which he was using as cosmic distance markers — were so-called standard candles, not changing much over time.

Tinsley’s work suggested, however, that these galaxies were not so constant — that they could dim with age as the stars inside them evolved.

Such effects, if true, would undermine Sandage’s method and could tip the answer of the fate of the universe to that of expanding forever, existence being a one-way trip into the eternal night.

Her dissertation was published — Sandage ignored it — and she got her Ph.D. in 1968. At the same time, she and her husband adopted a boy, Alan, and then later a girl, Teresa. While in Dallas, raising the children, she got involved in Planned Parenthood and Zero Population Growth.

Meanwhile, by dint of scientific conferences and visits to places like Mount Wilson and Palomar and the University of Maryland, Tinsley continued to pursue her vision of galaxies and cosmology.

In 1972 she and three young colleagues — James Gunn and J. Richard Gott of Princeton and David Schramm of the University of Texas at the time — set out to summarize what they thought was growing evidence that the universe would expand forever.

“We were sort of young Turks wanting to upset the establishment,” Schramm, who died in 1997, said in an interview in 1986.

“Beatrice was the glue,” recalled Gunn, who said that she had done most of the writing for the paper, titled “An Unbound Universe?” The paper had a saucy tone, far from the austere formality that had characterized astronomical pronouncements before.

“Desist from thrusting out reasoning from your mind because of its disconcerting novelty,” the paper began, quoting the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. “For the mind wants to discover by reasoning what exists in the infinity of space that lies out there beyond the ramparts of this world,” it went on. “Here then is my first point. In all dimensions alike, on this side or that, upward or downward through the universe, there is no end.”

In other words, the universe would expand forever; there would be no Big Crunch, no chance of a second act for the Big Bang. After the paper was rejected by the journal Nature, it was published in The Astrophysical Journal in 1974.

A year later Sandage reached a similar conclusion, that the universe was not slowing down enough to ever collapse again. So much for the idea (a sentimental favorite of many astronomers) of a cyclic universe going from Big Bang to Big Crunch, like a beating heart. “The universe has only happened once,” Sandage wrote.

In the years before cancer struck her down in 1981, Tinsley became known as the world’s leading expert on the aging and evolution of galaxies.Credit...Walter Oleksy/Alamy


Tinsley was delighted. “It might be ‘bad science’ to like the universe being open because it feels better, but there is in me a strong delight in that possibility,” she wrote in a letter to her father. “I think I am tied to the idea of expanding forever — like life in a sense — more than spatial infinity.”


(Further observations a quarter of a century later, using distant exploding stars instead of galaxies as milestones, were to show that the expansion of the universe was in fact speeding up, under the influence of what astronomers call dark energy. Tinsley had been right with “a vengeance,” Larson said.)

That same year, 1975, Tinsley was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Award, given by the American Association of University Women for outstanding postdoctoral research.

But despite her rising prominence, she couldn’t find a job in Texas. She complained to her father that she felt “rejected and undervalued intellectually.”

Reluctantly, she expanded her search and took a job at Yale, drawn by the chance to work with Larson. She divorced Brian Tinsley, from whom she had grown distant, and gave up custody of the children, leaving on Christmas, Larson said.

It was a choice she later agonized over. When her cancer appeared, Larson said, she wondered if it was nature’s retribution for her being a bad mother.

Larson said she had tried to make up for her absence by inviting the children to visit New Haven regularly and taking them on vacation trips.

But it hurt, said her daughter, Teresa Tinsley, who now lives in Dallas. (Tinsley’s son, Alan, lives in Phoenix.)

“She was given an ultimatum that in my opinion was unfair: Choose family or a career,” Teresa Tinsley wrote in an email. “But that is how it was back in those days — women were supposed to be homemakers. I am proud that she stood her ground and followed her career.”

She added, “She followed her dream — a dream created when she was a very young lady, her dream to be a scientist.”

At Yale, Tinsley was the first female astronomy professor. Her position, as she wrote to her father, gave her “a sense of hope and power over the future that has escaped me for years.”


In 1977 she organized and hosted a symposium that brought together the world’s experts on the evolution of stars and galaxies. The transcribed proceedings, which she and Larson edited, have become a classic reference for researchers.

But she did not have long to enjoy her recognition. A year later she discovered that a lump on her leg was melanoma.

In 1979 she brought Teresa, who was then 11, to New Haven for whatever time was left. Her daughter recalled playing after school in the halls of the astronomy department, and her mother helping her with her homework in the Yale Infirmary. Near the end, Tinsley wrote a poem:


Let me be like Bach, creating fugues
Till suddenly the pen will move no more.
Let all my themes within — of ancient light
Of origins and change and human worth —
Let all their melodies still intertwine,
Evolve and merge with growing unity,
Ever without fading
Ever without a final chord …
Till suddenly my mind can hear no more.