| Sir Fred Hoyle | |
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| Born | 24 June 1915 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) |
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Notes
He is the father of Geoffrey Hoyle and Dr Elizabeth Butler. |
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Sir 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 as a jocular, perhaps disparaging, name for the theory which was the main rival to his own.[2] 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.
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Hoyle was born near Bingley in Gilstead, West Yorkshire, England.[3] His father, Ben Hoyle, worked in the wool trade in Bradford. 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.[4] In the autumn of 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 the incoming airplanes. Two key colleagues in this war work were Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, and the three had many and deep discussions on cosmology.
After the war, in 1945, Hoyle returned to Cambridge University, starting as a lecturer at St John's College, Cambridge. Hoyle's Cambridge years, 1945-1973, saw him rise to the top of world astrophysics theory, grounded on a startling originality of ideas covering a very wide range of topics. In 1958, Hoyle was appointed to the illustrious Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge University. In 1967, he became the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (subsequently renamed the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, where Hoyle's innovative leadership quickly lead to this institution becoming one of the premier groups in the world for theoretical astrophysics. Hoyle was knighted in 1972. Hoyle resigned his Plumian professor position in 1972 and his directorship of the institute in 1973, with this move effectively cutting him off from most of his establishment power-base, connections, and steady salary.
After his leaving Cambridge, Hoyle wrote popular science books (of immense impact to young astronomers the world over) and top-quality science fiction books, as well as presenting many popular lectures around the world. Part of the motivation for this was simply 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. After his resignation from Cambridge, Hoyle moved to the Lake District and occupied his time with a mix of treks across the moors, writing books, visiting research centers around the world, and working on science ideas that have been nearly-universally rejected. On 24 November 1997, while hiking across moorlands in west Yorkshire, near his childhood home in Gilstead, Hoyle fell down into a steep ravine called Shipley Glenn. Roughly twelve hours later, Hoyle was found by a search dog. He was hospitalized for two months with pneumonia, kidney problems as a result of hypothermia, and a smashed shoulder, while he ever afterwards suffered from memory and mental agility problems. In 2001, he suffered a series of strokes and died in Bournemouth on 20 August.
In the 1950's, Hoyle was the leader of a group of very talented experimental and theoretical physicists; with William Alfred Fowler, Margaret Burbidge, and Geoffrey Burbidge. This group realized the basic ideas of how all the chemical elements in our Universe were manufactured, with this now being a field called nucleosynthesis. Famously, in 1957, this group produced the cornerstone B²FH paper (known for the initials of the four authors) in which the field of nucleosynthesis field was defined and the large picture solved.
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 resonance energy 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 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.
These 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. | ” |
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—Fred Hoyle, [5] |
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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.[6] 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. | ” |
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—William Fowler, [7] |
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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),[8]. 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 one 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. 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 shows that he intended the expression to help his listeners.[9] 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.[10]
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.[11]
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.
Hoyle appeared in a series of radio talks on astronomy for the BBC in the 1950s;[12] these were collected in the book The Nature of the Universe[13], 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.[14]
In his later years, Hoyle became a staunch critic of theories of abiogenesis used to explain the origin of life on Earth. With Chandra Wickramasinghe, Hoyle promoted the theory 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. In 1982, Hoyle presented Evolution from Space for the Royal Institution's Omni Lecture. After considering what he thought of as a very remote probability 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 or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of... | ” |
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—Fred Hoyle, [15] |
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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. | ” |
Hoyle, a life-long atheist, anti-theist and Darwinist said that this apparent suggestion of a guiding hand left him "greatly shaken." Those who advocate the intelligent design belief 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. Alfred Russel of the Uncommon Descent community has even gone so far as labeling Hoyle "an atheist for ID".[16]
Hoyle compared 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." 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 Cubes simultaneously.[17] (See the watchmaker analogy for superficially similar reasoning but used by creationists.) Misunderstandings of Hoyle's statements and this line of reasoning (at various levels of accuracy) appear frequently in support of intelligent design. Mainstream evolutionary biology rejects Hoyle's interpretation of statistics, and supporters of modern evolutionary theory who oppose panspermia, refer to this as "Hoyle's fallacy". Apart from claiming a role for panspermia in natural selection, Hoyle accepted the rest of the standard account of evolution.
Hoyle frequently aroused controversy on a wide range of subjects.[18] For science topics, Hoyle strongly held many claims and positions that ran distinctly against the opinions and evidence supported by virtually all the rest of the scientific community: (1) Hoyle was one of the originators of the 'perfect cosmological principle' and the steady state theory, as an alternative to the Big Bang model. This stance was originally a plausible science position, but after the discovery of the cosmic microwave background and the distribution of brightnesses for radio sources, this stance became implausible. By the time of the 1993 introduction of the quasi-steady state cosmology, Hoyle's position only marginalized him. (2) Hoyle did not accept the usual chemical evolution for the origin of life on Earth, and instead put forth the idea of panspermia, wherein bacteria-like life develops in space and is then distributed widely through our galaxy before arriving on Earth and evolving into current Earth-life. (3) A related claim is that the incidence of flu epidemics is correlated 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. (4) Hoyle questioned the authenticity of fossil Archaeopteryx[19], claiming that it was a man-made fake. This assertion was definitively refuted, among other strong reasons, by the presence of microcracks extending through the fossil into the surrounding rock. (5) As did Thomas Gold, Hoyle defended primordial origin of natural hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas). "The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time." (6) In 1977, Hoyle published a book titled "On Stonehenge" in which he concocts a system by which it is theoretically possible for the neolithic Britons to use the 56 Aubrey holes as positions for marker stones to be moved daily so as to predict eclipses.
Hoyle frequently engaged in feuds and controversies with members and institutions of the British astronomy community at all levels. A famous example is his feud with Martin Ryle over the meaning of the brightness distribution of radio sources, which served as an early refutation of the steady state model. A typical example was trying to get the Royal Astronomical Society to accept a paper for publication in their Monthly Notices. Hoyle was frequently angry at the labyrinthine and petty politics at Cambridge. In September 1964, Hoyle submitted his resignation, but was talked out of it after a pledge of new funding. All of Hoyle's frustrations were released by a relatively minor affair in September 1971, where Hoyle had one particular candidate, Wallace L. W. Sargent, and later Geoffrey Burbidge, to replace retiring Cambridge professor Roderick Oliver Redman. When the Cambridge committee voted to instead select the eminent Donald Lynden-Bell, Hoyle submitted his formal resignation on 14 February 1972. Hoyle explained his resignation over such a small issue with "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 forever 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." This resignation was the "watershed" moment in Hoyle's career, after which he was only a maverick outsider pushing fringe and ludicrous claims.[20]
Two controversies involved the sociology of the Nobel Prize for Physics. The 1974 prize went in part to Anthony Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars, and 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 British libel laws, Hoyle wrote a careful letter of explanation to The Times. The second Nobel controversy involved whether he should have been awarded part of the 1983 prize in physics. 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". Hoyle had been one of the key and original workers in nucleosynthesis, so a suspicion is common that Hoyle was denied the third place in the prize because of his earlier public disagreement with the 1974 award.[21] An alternative view is that the Nobel Prize is not just an award for a piece of work but is a recognition of a scientist's overall reputation, while Hoyle had loudly championed many disreputable and disproven ideas. As such the Nobel committee would not want to award Hoyle the Prize as this would only serve to apparently validate Hoyle's "rubbish".[6][22]
Other than his great works on nucleosynthesis and popularization, Hoyle's career is largely dominated by his many controversies and disproven fringe claims.
Awards
Named after him
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.
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.
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