Fred Hoyle

It's a Fact 
During 1960's Hoyle gave a lecture at Royal Society meeting attended by lot of eminent scientists. After the lecture when Hoyle asked for questions a young man in the audience said Hoyle's calculations were inaccurate. The whole gathering was surprised by this as Hoyle was the most eminent cosmologist and astrophysicist in the World. "Would you like to tell us how you know this, young man?" asked Sir Fred, with heavy sarcasm. "Because I worked it out," said the young man . And he had. Any guesses who this young man is? He later became world famous as an eminent Theoretical Astrophysicist by the name of Stephen Hawking!!!



Fred Hoyle
```````(1915-2001)
~~~~~~~Originator of the steady state theory 


Born: June 24, 1915, Gilstead, Bingley, West Ridin of Yorkshire, England
Died: August 20, 2001 (aged 86), Bournemouth England,

Occupation : Astronomer,Writer 
Religious stance : Atheist 
Spouse: Barbara Clark (28 December 1939) 
Children: Geoffrey Hoyle, Elizabeth Hoyle


Sir Fred Hoyle was born on 24th June, 1915 in Bingley, Yorkshire in England to Ben Hoyle and Mabel Hoyle. Fred first attended private school for a few weeks in July, 192 land entered a school near Thundersley and later returned to the former school. 


Sir Fred Hoyle was an English astronomer and author who suggested a scheme for nuclear reactions inside stars. He also proposed exploding star theory of the Solar System in 1946. He is best known for steady state theory of universe and coined the term 'big bang' to ridicule the rival theory. 


Later Hoyle entered Morning road school in Bingley and Bingley Grammar School in September 1926.After taking a scholarship examination in September 1932 to study at Leeds University he narrowly missed out. In 1932 he sat for scholarship examination in Emmanuel College in Cambridge and in autumn of 1933 entered this college to read for a degree in science. 


Hoyle was taught by some outstanding scientists at Cambridge including Max Born, Sir Arthur Eddington and Paul Dirac. 


After doing research in Applied mathematics Hoyle studied the problem of accretion of gas by a large gravitational body, which started his interest in astronomy. During World War II Hoyle married Barbara Clark in December 1939. They had a daughter and a son Geoffrey who later did research with him. During the war Hoyle worked for the Admiralty on radar, doing most of his work in Nutbourne. At the Admiralty, Hoyle met Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold who would later propose "Steady State Cosmology" for which Hoyle was best known. 


They proposed that the Universe on the large scale looks the same not only in each region of space but also in different eras of time. The idea was that as the galaxies moved away from each other, new galaxies were continually forming in the gaps in between from new matter that was being continually created. Then the universe would therefore took roughly the same way at all times as well as all points of space. One of the predictions of the theory was that number of galaxies or similar objects in any given volume of space should be the same wherever you look and whenever you look in universe. After 1948 when Hoyle published his theory a group of astronomers led by Martin Ryle did a survey of radio wave sources from outer space. Ryle and his team showed that most of these radio sources must lie outside our galaxy as results indicated and he was able to show that there were more weak radio sources than strong ones. They interpreted the  weak sources as being more distant ones and strong sources as nearer ones. Then there appeared to be less common sources per unit volume of space for the nearby sources than for the distant ones. The results implied that we are in a region of the universe in which the radio sources are fewer than elsewhere. This indicated that radio sources were more numerous in the past then now. Either explanation contradicted the Steady state theory although Hoyle believed the results were misinterpreted. 


After 3 years as a junior lecturer in mathematics Hoyle was appointed as lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge. In 1957 Hoyle published his first science fiction novel "The Black Cloud". In this book Hoyle imagined an interstellar nebular cloud with matter and electromagnetic fields organized in such a way that it developed a consciousness or will of its own. 


Hoyle became Plumerian professor of astrophysics and natural philosophy on October 1st, 1958 and in 1966 founded the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge and was its director till 1972. Renowned Sri Lankan Astronomer N.C. Wickremasinghe is one of his students.


Later in life Hoyle came up with novel ideas regarding origin of life in universe, Darwinism and Stonehenge.

Posted in: Greatest Astronomers