Fred Hoyle

British astrophysicist

• Born: June 24, 1915; Gilstead, England
• Died: August 20, 2001; Bournemouth, England

British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle established the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis to explain the chemical processes within stars, advocated for the steady-state theory of the universe, and extended the panspermia hypothesis. Hoyle also published numerous books that helped popularize science.

Primary fields: Astronomy; mathematics

Specialties: Theoretical astronomy; astrophysics; cosmology

Early Life

Frederick “Fred” Hoyle was born on June 24, 1915, in Gilstead, England, to Mabel Pickard Hoyle and Ben Hoyle, a wool merchant. Hoyle developed an early interest in mathematics and astronomy. He won a scholarship to Bingley Grammar School in 1926, and after graduation began studying mathematics at Emmanuel College at Cambridge University in 1932. In 1936, Hoyle was awarded the Mayhew Prize by the Cambridge mathematics faculty. He graduated that same year and became a fellow of St. John’s College at Cambridge in 1939. Hoyle married Barbara Clark on December 28, 1939. The couple would have two children, Geoffrey and Elisabeth.

Hoyle worked on radar systems for the British Admiralty during World War II before returning to Cambridge as a lecturer in mathematics. There, he worked with British mathematician and astronomer Ray A. Lyttelton on theoretical problems concerning the accumulation of dust and gas around large bodies in space. Initially recruited to apply his mathematical acumen to the models Lyttelton was building, Hoyle soon became fascinated by the theoretical problems of astrophysics and their relationship to actual astronomical data. He began to publish papers on astrophysics, including “The Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen” in 1946, which helped establish the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.

Life’s Work

While engaged in his work during World War II, Hoyle met Austrian astrophysicists Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, with whom he developed ideas opposed to the theory that the universe had resulted from a primal explosion. Hoyle called the theory with which he disagreed the “big bang,” and the name stuck. Along with Gold and Bondi, he suggested that the increasing gaps between galaxies must be filled in by the continuous creation of matter, thus maintaining the universe in the same stable state. They called this the steady-state theory.

Promoted in two papers published in 1948, the steady-state theory remained a viable alternative to the big bang theory until 1965, when the discovery of cosmic background radiation seemed to support the latter theory. In collaboration with Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar, Hoyle modified his version of the steady-state model in the 1960s to incorporate local phases of rapid expansion. He also continued to research the synthesis of elements, in particular the processes by which elements heavier than hydrogen are manufactured in stars. Hoyle posited that this synthesis results from the immense densities and temperatures at the cores of stars.

Despite Hoyle’s revisions to the steady-state theory, astronomical data provided by instruments such as the Hubble space telescope continued to provide evidence of universal evolution. Furthermore, Hoyle’s research into the synthesis of elements in stars, later called stellar nucleosynthesis, indirectly contributed to big bang modeling by helping to explain the manner in which the first elements of the universe were formed.

In addition to his research, Hoyle was committed to popularizing science through print and radio. Some of his early broadcasts were published in The Nature of the Universe: A Series of Broadcast Lectures (1950), which established the groundwork for Hoyle’s popular science texts: A Decade of Decision (1953), Frontiers of Astronomy (1955), Man and Materialism (1956), Of Men and Galaxies (1964), Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars (1965), Man in the Universe (1966), The New Face of Science (1971), and The Cosmogony of the Solar System (1978).

In 1957, Hoyle, American astrophysicist William A. Fowler, and British astrophysicists Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge coauthored a paper entitled “Synthesis of the Elements in Stars.” The paper, popularly known as “B²FH,” for the scientists’ initials, analyzes earlier research on the processes responsible for distributing elements in the universe. B²FH examines the nuclear fusion that takes place inside stars, thus establishing the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis that Hoyle had earlier worked toward.

Hoyle published his first novel, The Black Cloud, in 1957, and became a fellow of the Royal Society. He did little formal teaching thereafter, though he held honorary research professorships at the University of Manchester and University College, Cardiff. Hoyle also worked in the United States at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he was a visiting associate professor of physics in 1963, and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he held a visiting professorship for six years in the 1970s.

In 1958, Hoyle was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge, a position he held until 1972. In 1967, he founded the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge. That same year, he was awarded the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science. Hoyle served as vice president of the Royal Society from 1969 to 1971, which awarded him the Royal Medal in 1974, and served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1971 to 1973. He was also a member of the Science Research Council from 1967 to 1972 and was knighted in 1972. He resigned as director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in 1973.

While Hoyle was working at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, he began collaborating with Sri Lankan-born British astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe. Together, they developed a new version of Swedish physicist Svante August Arrhenius’s panspermia hypothesis, which suggests that life originated elsewhere in the universe and that the Earth had been “seeded” by comets. The Hoyle-Wickramasinghe version of the theory proposes that cometary debris rained biological material, including agents of disease, upon the planet’s surface. Hoyle had first entertained the notion of life originating in clouds of cosmic dust in his science fiction novel The Black Cloud, but Hoyle and Wickramasinghe developed the idea in a serious way in the nonfiction publications Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe (1978), Diseases from Space (1979), Evolution from Space (1981), The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution (1983), Cosmic Life-Force (1988), and Our Place in the Cosmos: The Unfinished Revolution (1993). Although spectroscopic analysis of cosmic dust clouds produced increasing evidence of complex organic molecules, Hoyle’s peers remained skeptical, especially of the claim that epidemics are caused by temporary deluges of extraterrestrial viruses rather than by interpersonal human infection.

Hoyle wrote other works of science fiction, including Ossian’s Ride (1959) and October the First Is Too Late (1966). With author and television producer John Elliot, he developed two television serials: A for Andromeda (1961) and The Andromeda Breakthrough (1962), in which a radio broadcast from space provides instructions for building an advanced computer. Most of Hoyle’s later fiction was written for children in collaboration with his son Geoffrey. These works, including The Inferno (1973) and The Incandescent Ones (1977), helped educate children about science. Hoyle died on August 20, 2001, in Bournemouth, England.

Impact

After Hoyle, Bondi, and Gold proposed the steady-state theory, it had both cultural and scientific influence. The works written by Hoyle, Bondi, and others about the theory were popular in the 1950s. The theory appealed to people philosophically, since it proposed an infinite universe of order. In addition, the steady-state theory stimulated theoretical and empirical work among cosmologists as they sought to prove or disprove the theory. In doing so, cosmologists found that all galaxies close enough to be studied have at least some old stars. That, along with the 1965 discovery of microwave radiation presumably left behind by the big bang, discredited the steady-state theory. Still, Hoyle’s revision of the steady-state theory to include rapid expansion anticipated the later inflation theory, which hypothesizes a rapid exponential expansion of the early universe.

Though much of Hoyle’s work has not been proven, his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis has helped scientists understand the nature of stars and, in turn, has contributed to scientists’ understanding of the universe as a whole. In addition, Hoyle’s numerous publications have helped bring studies in cosmology and astrophysics to a general audience.

Bibliography

Gough, Douglas, ed. The Scientific Legacy of Fred Hoyle. 2005. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print. A collection of essays evaluating Hoyle’s contributions to scientific knowledge and debate.

Gregory, Jane. Fred Hoyle’s Universe. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print. A comprehensive summary of Hoyle’s ideas relating to the origin and nature of the universe.

Lightman, Alan M., and Roberta Brawer. Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Print. An anthology that contains a long interview with Hoyle in which his scientific ideas are critically explored.

Mitton, Simon. Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science. Washington: Joseph Henry, 2006. Print. Biography that concentrates on the controversies in which Hoyle was embroiled.

Wickramasinghe, Chandra. A Journey with Fred Hoyle: The Search for Cosmic Life. Ed. Kamala Wickramasinghe. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2007. Print. A memoir by Hoyle’s collaborator Wickramasinghe.