Fred Hoyle

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Sir Fred Hoyle

(born June 24, 1915, Bingley, Yorkshire, Eng. — died Aug. 20, 2001, Bournemouth, Dorset) British mathematician and astronomer. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he became a lecturer in 1945. Within the framework of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, Hoyle formulated a mathematical basis for the steady-state theory of the universe, making the expansion of the universe and the creation of matter interdependent. Controversy about the theory grew in the late 1950s and early '60s. New observations of distant galaxies and other phenomena supported the big-bang model and weakened the steady-state theory, which has since generally fallen out of favour. Though forced to alter some of his conclusions, Hoyle persistently tried to make his theory consistent with new evidence. He is known also for his popular science works and fiction.

For more information on Sir Fred Hoyle, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

5min Related Video: Fred Hoyle

Top

Scientist: Sir Fred Hoyle

Top

British astronomer (1915–2001)

The son of a textile merchant from Bingley in Yorkshire, England, Hoyle was educated at Cambridge. After graduating in 1936 he remained at Cambridge as a graduate student before being elected to a fellowship at St. John's College in 1939. Hoyle spent World War II working on the development of radar at the Admiralty. After the war he returned to Cambridge and was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy in 1958.

Hoyle first came to prominence in 1948 with his formulation of the ‘steady-state theory’ of the universe. He was aware that cosmology at the time was inadequate in that it required a smaller age for the universe than geologists had attributed to the Earth. Hoyle's ideas about the steady-state theory were provoked one night in 1946, when he went to see a ghost film with Hermann Bondi (1919–2005) and Thomas Gold. The film was in four parts but linked the sections together to create a circular plot in which the end of the film became its beginning. Hoyle later noted that it showed him that unchanging situations need not be static. The universe could perhaps be both unchanging and dynamic.

Hoyle worked out some of the detailed implications of this view in his 1948 paper A New Model for the Expanding Universe. Matter, he argued, was created continually. It arose from a field generated by the matter that already exists – that is, in the manner of the film, “Matter chases its own tail.” Created matter is spread throughout the whole of space and, according to the theory, is being produced at a rate of about one atom per year in a volume equal to that of a large building. It is this creation that drives the expansion of the universe. Matter is distributed evenly through space and therefore new clusters of galaxies are forming as other galaxies are receding into the distance.

Although Hoyle's work was initially treated sympathetically, the steady-state theory failed to cope with new evidence emerging in the 1960s from radio astronomy. Counts of radio sources by Martin Ryle in the 1960s and, in particular, the discovery by Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias of the cosmic background radiation in 1964, convinced most scientists that the universe had begun with a big bang. Hoyle defended his theory strongly, objecting to the accuracy of the radio counts by arguing that they were so constructed as to allow every error to count against the theory. “Properly analyzed,” Hoyle wrote in 1980, “the disproof of the theory claimed in the 1950s and early 1960s fails completely.” He has also suggested that there could be alternative explanations for the background radiation.

Hoyle subsequently felt that he was not committed to the details of any cosmological orthodoxy, such as either the big bang or the steady-state theory of 1948. He spent much time exploring the implications of both theories and, in collaboration with Jayant Narlikar, developing a new theory of gravity. In 1964 they proposed, following some early arguments of Ernst Mach, that the inertia of any piece of matter derives from the rest of the matter in the universe. They also predicted that the gravitational constant changes over time.

Hoyle also worked in the 1950s on the formation of the elements. It was widely believed that carbon could be formed, along with many other elements, in the interior of stars. One reaction proposed required three helium nuclei to fuse into a carbon atom as in:

⁴He + ⁴He + ⁴He → ¹²C

Hoyle realized that the reaction would take place too infrequently to account for the abundance of carbon in the universe. Another possibility was a two-stage reaction:

⁴He + ⁴He → ⁸Be

⁸Be + ⁴He → ¹²C

In this, two helium nuclei first form a beryllium nucleus which fuses in turn with another helium nucleus to form carbon. As the Be has a longer life-time than the collision time of two ⁴He nuclei, the reaction should make the production of carbon more likely. Something more was needed and in 1954 Hoyle predicted that there must be a resonance channel easing the two reaction steps. Hoyle's prediction was confirmed when it was shown experimentally that there was an energy level of 7.65 million electronvolts (MeV) in the ¹²C nucleus, just above the energy of the Be + ⁴He structure of 7.366 MeV.

Further work on the formation of the elements was carried out by Hoyle in collaboration with William Fowler and Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge. In 1957 their work resulted in a paper, commonly referred to as B²FH, that is one of the most authoritative and comprehensive works of modern science. It describes precisely how all the naturally occurring elements other than hydrogen and helium are formed in the interior of stars.

Hoyle spent much of the early 1960s working in the U.S. at the Hale Observatories and at Princeton. In 1967 he was appointed director of the newly formed Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge. It was not a happy time. There were bitter disputes with Martin Ryle and the radio astronomers, demands for apologies, and threats of legal action. Hoyle had problems with his requests for funds from the research councils. In 1973 he resigned and since then has held no permanent post.

He has, however, continued to publish on a wide variety of topics. Much of this later work, often in collaboration with Chandra Wickramsingh of Cardiff University, stems from his claim that the blind operation of physicochemical laws would have been insufficient to shuffle an assortment of amino acids into an enzyme. The odds against this happening by chance were 1 in 10^40,000, as were the chances that an atom with the properties of carbon could be produced by nature. Such considerations led Hoyle to attack the notion of evolution by natural selection.

Hoyle began his campaign with a frontal attack; he asserted that the fossil of Archaeopteryx was a fake. Probably the most famous of all fossils, Archaeopteryx had been bought by the British Museum in 1862 for £700 and supposedly links reptiles with birds. Hoyle published a paper in 1985 claiming that the skeleton was genuine and of a reptile, but that the feathers had been glued on. Hoyle went on to publish a book on the issue, Archaeopteryx, the Story of a Fake (1987) in which he identified Richard Owen as the culprit. Tests of the fossil by the British Museum have failed to detect any glue or cement.

But if enzymes, let alone organisms could not have evolved on Earth, where did they originate? In Lifecloud (1978), Diseases from Space (1979), and Space Travellers (1981), Hoyle argued that life must have come from space. Hoyle was partly led to this view by a longstanding interest in interstellar grains. They had long been thought to be made of ice, but, as they failed to reveal the appropriate infrared absorption bands, this view had to be ruled out. Hoyle pursued the matter and struggled for twenty years to find a particle with the observed spectral properties of the interstellar grains. In 1980 he decided to compare the grains with bacteria and found, to his great surprise, agreement so close that he was forced to conclude that “hitherto unidentified components of dust clouds were in fact bacterial cells.”

Hoyle's new theory allowed him to explain not only the origin of life on Earth but also much about the spread of disease. The abrupt appearance of a new disease, such as syphilis in the 15th century, can be seen as a bacterial seeding from a passing comet. Other epidemiological problems can also be solved in this way. How, for example, Hoyle asks, did a group of Amerindians in Suriname, isolated from all alien contact until recently, become infected with the polio virus? Because, Hoyle believes, both forest and city dwellers were infected with pathogens rained on them from above.

Hoyle's numerous other publications cover such areas as the history of astronomy in his Copernicus (1973), an important textbook, Astronomy and Cosmology (1975), archeo-astronomy in From Stonehenge to Modern Cosmology (1972), and a first volume of autobiography in his The Small World of Fred Hoyle (1986). He has also written fourteen science-fiction novels, the first being The Black Cloud (1957). In 1994 Hoyle published his long-awaited autobiography, Home is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life.

Biography: Fred Hoyle

Top

British astronomer and cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle (born 1915) is best known as the champion of the steady-state theory of the nature of the universe. He also has made significant contributions to the study of stellar evolution and has published more than 40 books, including science fiction.

Fred Hoyle was born in Bingley, Yorkshire, England, on June 24, 1915. His fascination with mathematics and astronomy was evident at an early age. He taught himself the multiplication tables before he was six and would often stay up all night looking through a telescope he received as a gift.

Hoyle was educated at Emmanuel College and St. John's College, Cambridge. He spent six years during World War II with the British Admiralty working on radar development. In 1945, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in mathematics. Three years later, in collaboration with the astronomer Thomas Gold and the mathematician Hermann Bondi, he announced refinements to the steady-state theory first put forward by Sir James Jeans in about 1920. Within the framework of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, Hoyle formulated a mathematical basis for the steady state theory, making the expansion of the universe and the creation of matter interdependent.

Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle found the idea of a sudden beginning to the universe-the so-called big bang theory-philosophically unsatisfactory. They devised a model derived from an extension of the "cosmological principle" that had been used for previous theories. It stated that the universe appeared the same from any location, but not necessarily for all times. They proposed that the decrease in the density of the universe caused by its expansion is exactly balanced by the continuous creation of matter condensing into galaxies that take the place of the galaxies that have receded from the Milky Way, thereby maintaining forever the present appearance of the universe.

Controversy Over Steady-State Theory

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, controversy over the steady state theory grew. New observations of distant galaxies and other phenomena, supporting the big bang theory, weakened the steady state theory, and it has since fallen out of favor with most cosmologists. Although Hoyle was forced to alter some of his conclusions, he attempted to make his theory consistent with new evidence.

Hoyle was elected to the Royal Society in 1957, a year after joining the staff of the Hale Observatories (now the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories). In collaboration with William Fowler and others in the United States, he formulated theories about the origins of stars as well as about the origins of elements within stars. He directed the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge (1967-73), an institution he was instrumental in founding. Hoyle received a knighthood in 1972.

In 1976, Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, a fellow professor at the University of Cardiff with whom Hoyle often collaborated, speculated that microorganisms or biochemical compounds from outer space are responsible for originating life on Earth and possibly other parts of the universe.

In 1981, the two coauthored Diseases from Space in which they hypothesized that viruses and bacteria fall into the atmosphere after being incubated in the interiors of comet heads, and that people become ill by breathing this infected air. They supported their theory by stating that the spread of disease is frequently far too rapid to be attributable solely to person-to-person contact. Their theory, known as panspermia, was widely derided.

AIDS From Outer Space?

In December 1988, Hoyle wrote to the Daily Telegraph of London explaining his theory that AIDS originated in outer space. It was immediately dismissed by most British AIDS experts. Many viewed the theory as proof that Hoyle had overstepped the limits of acceptable scientific eccentricity. His letter claimed that viruses from outer space are also responsible for many other epidemics in Britain, including Legionnaires' disease and meningitis. "A small comet disintegrating low in the atmosphere could lead to pathogens being brought down in rainstorms that are geographically localized, " Hoyle claimed. "The comets responsible for new diseases such as AIDS are admittedly rare objects, but the sudden injection into the human population of at least three disjoint viruses point decisively to an input that is external to the Earth, " Hoyle wrote. "We think it most likely in each instance primary entry was secured through infected rainwater entering lesions in feet in the mainly barefoot populations of the Third World with subsequent transmissions proceeding through human contact. Hoyle urged that a major international effort was needed to carry out "a rigorous and continuous microbiological surveillance of rainwater and of groundwater on a worldwide scale. The survival of our species may well be contingent upon this." His ideas were largely viewed as fantasy by other scientists.

In 1996, however, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that a small asteroid it had been studying possibly contained fossil remains of primitive life. This finding rekindled speculation about the extraterrestrial "seeding" of life on Earth. Other recent discoveries in astronomy, biology, and chemistry have tended to support the idea first proposed by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe some 20 years earlier. Other scientists, however, remain skeptical. Under closer scrutiny, the evidence turned out to be ragweed pollen and furnace ash. If NASA's microfossils really are the remnants of past life on Mars, then the implications for life and how it got started are profound. The first thing that would have to be explained is why ancient microorganisms on Earth and on Mars are apparently so similar. Some scientists, such as Ian Crawford of University College London, believe that the resemblance may be only superficial.

An Iconoclast

Hoyle has published numerous books challenging many of the basic tenets of modern cosmology. In his 1951 book, The Nature of the Universe, Hoyle rejects the longstanding big bang theory of the origin of the universe in favor of the steady state theory. He expounds further upon the steady state and other theories in The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution, published in 1977. In it, he dismisses one piece of orthodox science after another, replacing each with ingenious alternatives. He also presents an argument against Darwin's theory of evolution, claiming that "living organisms are too complex to have been produced by chance." Hoyle suggests, instead, that "we owe our existence to another intelligence which created a structure for life as part of a deliberate plan." In describing the attributes of an intelligence superior to ourselves, Hoyle admits that we may have to use the word forbidden in science, "God." He said he found his atheism greatly shaken after calculating the chance that carbon, "uniquely designed to make life possible, " would have precisely the required resonance to permit it to form in sufficient abundance in the universe. "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect 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." His scientific works for a lay audience include Highlights in Astronomy (1975). He has also written science-fiction, including The Black Cloud (1957), and an autobiography, The Small World of Fred Hoyle (1986).

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were among the first to argue against the theory that life on Earth originated in a so-called "prebiotic soup." The theory is based on a famous experiment by Stanley Miller in 1953. Deciding to test an earlier hypothesis by Alexander Oparin and John Haldane, Miller started with a sealed mixture of gases thought to be constituents of the primitive Earth's atmosphere. The gases-water vapor, hydrogen, ammonia, and methane-were subjected to an electric discharge, simulating lightning, and the products were found to contain certain amino acids that are building blocks of proteins. This experiment led to the theory that living organisms originated from a prebiotic soup formed in the above manner. This theory soon became the textbook model to describe the origins of life. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe pointed out that the primitive Earth could not have had the hydrogen-rich atmosphere postulated for a prebiotic soup.

Science Fiction

Hoyle has remained controversial. In 1981, he and others made the erroneous claim that a famous Archaeopteryx fossil in the British Museum was a fake. In 1990, he coauthored a theory linking influenza pandemics and sunspot outbreaks. While noting that Hoyle's theses are sometimes far-fetched, reviewers often express their admiration for the author's writing style, statistical data, and its richness in classical quotations. Hoyle has also authored over a dozen science fiction novels, more than half of which have been co-written with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle. Several critics suggest that Hoyle's highly technical and scientific background enhances the credibility and appeal of his novels.

Among the numerous awards and distinctions bestowed on him are the UN Kalinga Prize, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1997, he was awarded the highly prestigious Crafoord Prize by the Swedish Academy in recognition of outstanding basic research in fields not covered by the Nobel Prize. Hoyle is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has published over 40 books, including technical science, popular science, and science fiction. Hoyle is an Honorary Fellow of both Emmanuel College and St. John's College Cambridge and an Honorary Professor of Cardiff University in Wales.

Sir Fred Hoyle

Born	24 June 1915(1915-06-24) Gilstead, Bingley, West Yorkshire, England
Died	20 August 2001 (aged 86) Bournemouth, England
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Fields	Astronomy
Institutions	Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Alma mater	Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Academic advisors	Rudolf Peierls Maurice Pryce Philip Worsley Wood
Doctoral students	John Moffat Chandra Wickramasinghe Cyril Domb Jayant Narlikar
Other notable students	Paul C. W. Davies
Known for	Coining the phrase 'Big Bang' Hoyle's fallacy Hoyle-Narlikar theory Steady state theory Triple-alpha process Panspermia
Influenced	Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Notable awards	Mayhew Prize (1936) Smith's Prize (1938) RAS Gold Medal (1968) Bruce Medal (1970) Royal Medal (1974) Klumpke-Roberts Award (1977) Crafoord Prize (1997)
Religious stance	Atheist turned Agnostic Deist
Notes He is the father of Geoffrey Hoyle and Elizabeth Butler.

Early life

Hoyle was born in Gilstead, West Yorkshire, England,^[1] near Bradford, where his father, George Hoyle, worked in the wool trade. His mother, Mabel Pickard, had studied music at the Royal College of Music in London. Hoyle was educated at Bingley Grammar School and read mathematics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.^[2]

Contribution to cosmology

An early paper of Hoyle's made an interesting use of the anthropic principle. In trying to work out the routes of stellar nucleosynthesis, he observed that one particular nuclear reaction, the triple-alpha process, which generates carbon, would require the carbon nucleus to have a very specific energy for it to work. The large amount of carbon in the universe, which makes it possible for carbon-based life-forms (e.g. humans) to exist, demonstrated that this nuclear reaction must work. Based on this notion, he made a prediction of the energy levels in the carbon nucleus that was later borne out by experiment.

However, those energy levels, while needed in order to produce carbon in large quantities, were statistically very unlikely. 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." Of course you would . . . 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.^[3]

Hoyle, an atheist until that time, said that this suggestion of a guiding hand left him "greatly shaken." Consequently, he began to believe in a god and panspermia.^[4] Those who advocate the intelligent design hypothesis sometimes cite Hoyle's work in this area to support the claim that the universe was fine tuned in order to allow intelligent life to be possible. Some of his thoughts in this area have been referred to as "Hoyle's fallacy" by detractors.

His co-worker William Alfred Fowler eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 (with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar), but for some reason Hoyle’s original contribution was overlooked, and many were surprised that such a notable astronomer missed out. 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.

Rejection of the Big Bang

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 philosophically troubling, as many argued that a beginning implies a cause, and thus a creator (see Kalam cosmological argument).^[5] Instead, Hoyle, along with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi (with whom he had worked on radar in World War II), argued for the universe as being in a "steady state". 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 the only serious alternative to the Big Bang which agreed with key observations of the day, namely Hubble's red shift observations, and Hoyle was a strong critic of the Big Bang. Ironically, he is responsible for coining the term "Big Bang" on BBC radio's Third Programme broadcast at 1830 GMT on 28 March 1949. It is popularly reported that Hoyle intended this to be pejorative, but the script from which he read aloud clearly shows that he intended the expression to help his listeners.^[6] In addition, 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 radio listeners.^[7]

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. These features of the C-field anticipated the later development of cosmic inflation. 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 was the theory that agreed best 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, at least in the minds of most cosmologists, included the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960s, the distribution of "young galaxies" and quasars throughout the Universe in the 1980s, a more consistent age estimate of the universe and most recently the observations of the COBE satellite in the 1990s and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe launched in 2001, which showed unevenness in the microwave background in the early universe, which corresponds to currently observed distributions of galaxies.

Media appearances and scientific honours

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

Hoyle appeared in a series of radio talks on astronomy for the BBC in the 1950s; these were collected in the book The Nature of the Universe, and he went on to write a number of other popular science books. In 1957 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he was knighted in 1972. He was jointly awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

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.^[8]

Science fiction

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

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.

Rejection of chemical evolution

In his later years, Hoyle became a staunch critic of theories of chemical evolution used to explain the naturalistic origin of life. With Chandra Wickramasinghe, Hoyle promoted the theory that life evolved in space, spreading through the universe via panspermia, and that evolution on earth is driven by a steady influx of viruses arriving via comets. In 1982, Hoyle presented Evolution from Space for the Royal Institution's Omni Lecture. After considering the very remote probability of evolution 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 or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of...^[9]

”

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 was one in 10^40,000. Since the number of atoms in the known universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (10⁸⁰), he argued that even a whole universe full of primordial soup would grant little chance to evolutionary processes. 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.

Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." Hoyle also compared 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 Cube simultaneously.^[10] (See the watchmaker analogy for similar reasoning.) Hoyle's statements and this line of reasoning (at various levels of accuracy) appears frequently in support of intelligent design. Mainstream evolutionary biology rejects Hoyle's interpretation of statistics, and strong supporters of Darwinism such as Richard Dawkins refer to this as "Hoyle's fallacy".

Other controversies

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

Further occasions on which Hoyle aroused controversy included his questioning the authenticity of fossil Archaeopteryx and his condemnation of the failure to include Jocelyn Bell in the Nobel Prize award recognizing the development of radio interferometry and its role in the discovery of pulsars.

The most important of Hoyle's contributions was probably his work on nucleosynthesis: the idea that the chemical elements were synthesized from primordial hydrogen and helium in stars. Many thought it unfair that a Nobel prize was awarded to his collaborator William A Fowler, but Hoyle himself was excluded from the prize.

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.

Honours

Awards

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1968)
Bruce Medal (1970)
Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1971)
Royal Medal (1974)
Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (1977)
Balzan Prize for Astrophysics: evolution of stars (1994, with Martin Schwarzschild)
Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, with Edwin Salpeter (1997)

Named after him

Asteroid 8077 Hoyle
Janibacter hoylei, species of bacteria discovered by ISRO scientists^[11]

Fiction works

The Black Cloud, 1957
Ossian's Ride, 1959
A for Andromeda, 1962 (co-authored with John Elliott)
Fifth Planet, 1963 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
The Andromeda Breakthrough, 1965 (co-authored with John Elliott)
October the First Is Too Late, 1966
Element 79, 1967
Rockets in Ursa Major, 1969 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
Seven Steps to the Sun, 1970 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
The Inferno, 10/1973 (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, 10/1978 (co-authored with Geoffrey Hoyle)
Comet Halley, 11/1985
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)

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.

Non-fiction works

Frontiers of Astronomy, Heinemann Education Books Limited, London, 1955. - The Internet Archive. HarperCollins, ISBN 0060027606 ISBN 978-0060027605
Burbidge, E.M., Burbidge, G.R., Fowler, W.A. and Hoyle, F., Synthesis of the Elements in Stars, Revs. 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 LC 62-14108
Nicolaus Copernicus, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., London, p. 78, 1973
Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course, 1975, ISBN 0-7167-0351-3
Energy or Extinction? The case for nuclear energy, 1977, Heinemann Educational Books Limited, ISBN 0-435-54430-6. 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.
Lifecloud - The Origin of Life in the Universe, Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe N.C., J.M. Dent and Sons, 1978. ISBN 0-460-04335-8
Commonsense in Nuclear Energy, Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle, 1980, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., ISBN 0-435-54432-2
The big bang in astronomy, New Scientist 92(1280):527, November 19, 1981.
Ice, the Ultimate Human Catastrophe,1981, ISBN 0826400647 [1] Snippet view from Google Books
The Intelligent Universe, 1983
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 0-671-49263-2
With Narlikar, J.V. and Wickramasinghe, N.C., The extragalactic universe: an alternative view, Nature 346:807–812, August 30, 1990.
The Origin of the Universe and the Origin of Religion,1993, ISBN 1559210834 [2]
Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (autobiography) Oxford University Press 1994, ISBN 0-19-850060-2
Mathematics of Evolution, (1987) University College Cardiff Press, (1999) Acorn Enterprises LLC., ISBN 0-9669934-0-3
With Burbridge G. and Narlikar J.V. A Different Approach to Cosmology, Cambridge University Press 2000, ISBN 0-521-66223-0

Notes

^ "Sir Fred Hoyle"
^ Moore, Patrick (January 2009). "Hoyle, Sir Fred (1915–2001)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/76123. Retrieved 2009-08-10. (Subscription required)
^ Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8–12
^ Gregg Easterbrook. Was Life Begun by Chance? Not a Chance. Beliefnet.com Accessed 22 September 2006
^ Quentin Smith, A Big Bang Cosmological Argument For God's Nonexistence. Faith and Philosophy. April 1992 (Volume 9, No. 2, pp. 217–237
^ Mitton, Simon, Fred Hoyle a life in science", p. 127, Aurum Press, 2005.
^ Croswell, Ken, The Alchemy of the Heavens, chapter 9, Anchor Books, 1995.
^ Jean-François Viot, Sur la route de Montalcino, 2008. Play: Atelier Jean Vilar, 2009.
^ Hoyle, Fred, Evolution from Space, Omni Lecture, Royal Institution, London, 12 January 1982; Evolution from Space (1982) pp. 27–28 ISBN 0894900838; Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism (1984) ISBN 0671492632
^ Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation at the talkorigins Archive
^ Discovery of New Microorganisms in the Stratosphere. 16 March 2009. ISRO.

References

Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Stephen Hawking: Quest For A Theory of Everything. Franklin Watts. ISBN 0-553-29895-X.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Fred Hoyle

Persondata
NAME	Hoyle, Fred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	English astronomer, writer
DATE OF BIRTH	24 June 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gilstead, West Yorkshire, England
DATE OF DEATH	20 August 2001
PLACE OF DEATH	Bournemouth, England

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

Learn More

	Margaret Burbidge (American-British astronomer)
	Leo Smit
	William Alfred Fowler (American physicist)

	What book is Randy Hoyle known for? Read answer...
	When was Hoyle Casino first made? Read answer...
	What is the meaning of the phrase 'according to hoyle'? Read answer...

Help us answer these

	Who were Fred Hoyle's influences?
	What did einstein think of fred hoyle's theory?
	When did Fred Hoyle propose his theory?

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

Copyrights:

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Scientist. A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fred Hoyle". Read more

Fred Hoyle

Contents

Early life

Contribution to cosmology

Rejection of the Big Bang

Media appearances and scientific honours

Science fiction

Rejection of chemical evolution

Other controversies

Honours

Fiction works

Non-fiction works

Notes

References

Further reading

External links