Sir Fred Hoyle, FRS (June 24, 1915 - August 20, 2001), was
an astrophysicist most famous for being a proponent of the steady state universe, a theory that
says the universe is infinitely large and infinitely old. Hoyle also disparagingly coined the term "big bang" to describe the competing theory that the observable universe originated in a great "explosion" of
matter and energy some 15 billion years ago. He also
theorized that life may have originated in space (particularly
in molecular clouds and on comets rich in organic molecules) rather than
on planets, a theory called panspermia.
Hoyle was born in Yorkshire, England, and was deeply interested in
astronomy as a boy. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University, where
he was
elected a fellow of St. John's College in 1939 with his dissertation on
quantum electrodynamics. During World War II
he worked on the development of RADAR for the British Navy, but returned
to a professorship at Cambridge after the war. He was elected Plumian
Professor at Cambridge in 1958, and founded the Institute for Theoretical
Astronomy in 1966.
Hoyle is most positively remembered for his work on nucleosynthesis,
particularly for his work energy generation and
nucleosynthesis in stars with Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge and
Willy Fowler, published in Reviews of Modern Physics in 1957
(volume 29, number 4, page 547). This article (more of a book, at
108 pages) was and is one of the seminal works on nucleosynthesis in
astrophysics. In fact, it is the result of Hoyle's work that we now
understand that all elements more complex than helium seen in the universe
were generated within stars, and dispersed via supernova explosions and
stellar mass loss. (That includes the carbon, oxygen
and other stuff that makes up you.) Hoyle also contributed to the
fields of stellar structure, and star and planetary formation over the
years.
However, much of Hoyle's fame (or notoriety) comes from his investigations
into "nonstandard" explanations for physical phenomena in the universe. In
1948, Hoyle, along with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold originated (in
astrophysics at least) the idea of an eternal universe, dubbed
steady-state cosmology (two articles in Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society, volume 108, pages 252 and 372). In this theory,
they suggested that matter is being spontaneously created from nothing
(perhaps from vacuum energy?), in order to explain the observed
Hubble expansion of the universe. The idea of continuous
creation wasn't new, having been discussed by James Jeans twenty years
prior to this. However, Hoyle, Bondi, and Gold were the first to
apply it to relativistic cosmology. This theory
competed with the big bang theory, which states that the universe originated
at a time in the finite past, expanding over time from an initial hot, dense
singularity.
The steady-state theory fell into disfavor after the
discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965, which is most
easily explained by the big bang theory. To the end of his life, Hoyle
tried to improve his steady state theory to explain observations, but was
never successful. It is noteworthy that Hoyle collaborated with the
astronomer Halton Arp in the 1980's, the latter of whom believed that
quasars are in fact ejected from the cores of galaxies, and
that their "redshifts" are intrinsic properties of this "young matter"
rather than being caused by high recession velocities (despite, I should add,
volumes of thoroughly investigated evidence to the contrary).
Apparently Hoyle felt Arp's rejection of cosmological redshifts and the
"creation" aspect of his quasar theory supported steady state.
Hoyle was truly notorious for his theories on evolutionary biology,
particularly those he developed with mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe of
University College, Cardiff, Wales. One theory they advanced was the
idea that life originated in space, particularly in places like
comets and molecular clouds where organic molecules are abundant. If these
organisms reach hospitable climates (like the young Earth, for example), they
can then develop and diversify, resulting in all the life we see today.
This in itself isn't too implausible, but
they later expanded this theory to say that not only did life originate in
space, but that evolution is not caused by random mutations and
adaptation to local conditions, but by mutagenic organisms from
space. (The Daily Telegraph obituary mentions a 1990 article by
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe stating that eruptions from sunspots push some
of these interstellar microorganisms into Earth's atmosphere where they
cause influenza epidemics, AIDS, and other diseases.) Hoyle always
maintained that he believed Darwinian evolution was wrong,
and was often criticized quite heavily for it. However, that criticism
was often earned, as for example when Hoyle and Wickramasinghe wrote the book
Archaeopteryx, the Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery,
saying that the best Archaeopteryx fossil was faked.
The book was brutally attacked by paleontologists and biologists, not because
it went against the common understanding of evolution, but because its
main premise was demonstrably false (the fossil is quite real). However,
it should be noted that the work of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe was not without
merit; they conducted very extensive and valuable work on the properties of
dust grains in the interstellar medium throughout the 1980's as part of
their research on panspermia.
Hoyle left Cambridge in 1973 over a funding dispute, and served
as a visiting professor at several universities around the world, notably
at CalTech, Cardiff, and at Rice University where he continued his work on
nucleosynthesis in the mid-1970's with Donald Clayton. Hoyle retired to
Bournemouth in the early 1990's, though he continued to give invited
lectures world wide, and write articles on his various theories. He was
involved in scientific research until his death. But besides his scientific
work, he was also an author of science fiction, and wrote several
well-received novels, including The Black Cloud. He also wrote
A is for Andromeda, about aliens who beam instructions for building a
doomsday machine to Earth. Both works apparently featured very accurate
descriptions of physics and science, unlike much of the science fiction of
the 1950's and 1960's. (I haven't read any of them, so I will leave a
review of those to another noder.)
Hoyle was elected to the Royal Society in 1957, and elected the Plumian
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge in 1958; he was knighted in 1972.
He received many other awards in his life, including the Gold medal of
the Royal Astronomical Society (1968), the Henry Norris Russell
Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1971), the Royal medal of
the Royal Society (1974), and the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of
the Pacific (2000) for lifetime achievement in astronomy.
Minor planet 8077 was named after Hoyle, as is the home of
the Institute for Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge which he created.
Hoyle had many controversial ideas during his lifetime, and some (probably
not all) of the criticism of him was probably justified. He was certainly
an independent thinker, and was -- admirably -- not afraid to discuss his
ideas. If I had to criticize him, I'd probably say he probably held onto
failed theories too long in the face of contradictory evidence, particularly
his views on cosmology. But despite his controversial work, he did make
very important contributions in the field of astrophysics, and should certainly
be remembered (and honored) for them.
Sources: obits at http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/ and
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/;
a bio at http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Hoyle/index.html;
and the astronomy and astrophysics journal archive at http://adsabs.harvard.edu