Sir Frederick Fred Hoyle FRS, English astronomer and mathematician, born on 24 June, 1915 (died 20 August 2001). He is renowned as one of the twentieth centurys great scientific thinkers, who was not afraid to question orthodox beliefs. He is best known as the foremost proponent and defender of the steady-state theory of the universe. This theory holds both that the universe is expanding and that matter is being continuously created to keep the mean density of matter in space constant. He rejected the Big Bang theory, a term originally coined by him on BBC radio. He was an noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters. 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. He is known for his popular science works, including The Nature of the Universe (1951), Astronomy and Cosmology (1975), and The Origin of the Universe and the Origin of Religion (1993). He also wrote novels, plays, short stories, and an autobiography, The Small World of Fred Hoyle (1986). 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. In addition to his views on steady state theory and panspermia, Hoyle also supported the following claims: 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. The fossil Archaeopteryx was a man-made fake. This assertion was definitively refuted by, among other strong reasons, the presence of microcracks extending through the fossil into the surrounding rock. The theory of abiogenic petroleum, where natural hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) are explained as the result of deep carbon deposits, instead of fossilised organic material. 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. The use of the fifty-six Aubrey holes at Stonehenge as a system for the neolithic Britons to predict eclipses, using them in the daily positioning of marker stones (a theoretically possible, but practically impossible system) as proposed in his 1977 book On Stonehenge. Hoyle was also at the centre of two controversies involving the politics for selecting the Nobel Prize for Physics. The first came when the 1974 prize went, in part, to Antony Hewish for his decisive 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. The second controversy came when 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 there was some suspicion that Hoyle was denied the third place in the prize because of his earlier public disagreement with the 1974 award. An alternative view is that the Nobel Prize is not just an award for a piece of work, but a recognition of a scientists overall reputation. With Hoyle having loudly championed many disreputable and disproven ideas, the Nobel committee may have not wanted to award Hoyle the Prize and validate Hoyles rubbish. Hoyle spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and served as its director for a number of years. Asteroid 8077 Hoyle, Janibacter hoylei, species of bacteria discovered by ISRO scientists and Sir Fred Hoyle Way, a dual carriageway in Bingley were all named in his honour. Reference: fredhoyle/, Retrieved 17 November, 2012; britannica/EBchecked/topic/273606/Sir-Fred-Hoyle, Retrieved 17 November, 2012; Burbidge, G. (2003). Sir Fred Hoyle. 24 June 1915 - 20 August 2001 Elected FRS 1957. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 49: 213; Fred Hoyle: the scientist whose rudeness cost him a Nobel prize. 2 October 2010. The Guardian, Retrieved 17 November, 2012; Mitton, Simon, Fred Hoyle a life in science, chapter 12, Cambridge University Press, 2011; Mitton, Simon, Fred Hoyle a life in science, chapter 11, Cambridge University Press, 2011; Mattox, J. (2001). Obituary: Fred Hoyle (1915–2001). Nature 413 (6853): 270; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle, Retrieved 17 November, 2012
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 05:30:00 +0000
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