Fred Hoyle: Beyond the ‘Big Bang’
If stars could talk, this is what they might have said to Fred Hoyle: “Shhhh.”
But he told their secrets anyway. The British astronomer, who died late last month at 86, discovered how stars create elements such as carbon that end up right here on Earth — and right inside each of us.
You could say, then, that we’re truly children of the stars — although if you said that within Hoyle’s earshot, you might very well have elicited a glare rather than a smile, say those who knew him.
Hoyle was a crusty, cantankerous man who led with his chin as well as his intellect. He was a brilliant troublemaker and, especially in his final years, an inspired crank. In one of the more whimsical ironies of the century he dominated with his astronomical theories, Hoyle coined the term “the Big Bang,” although for him it became the Big Headache.
Hoyle intended “Big Bang” as an offhand dismissal of the theory that the universe emerged in a tremendous explosion some 15 billion years ago. The name, however, struck a chord with scientists and the public. The put-down persevered.
Of all his scientific achievements, then — and there were many — Hoyle may best be remembered by many for labeling a theory in which he didn’t believe.
More Top Picks Best Caramel Making Tools
The moral: Never bestow a cute nickname on your enemy.
There are other morals, too, embedded in Hoyle’s life, like a pin cushion of stars in the night sky. Rising from humble beginnings to become one the world’s most eminent astrophysicists, he embraced unconventional ideas with courage and zest. He became a well-known science fiction writer. He published books on astrophysics that, while aimed at a general audience, never compromised on their scientific rigor; he demonstrated that popular science books “don’t have to jump up in your lap and lick your face like a puppy,” said Timothy Ferris, author of best-selling astronomy books such as “Coming of Age in the Milky Way” and “The Whole Shebang.”
He pioneered the study of nucleosynthesis, the process by which some of the chemical elements we know here on Earth were formed in the stars.
And in his suspicions of the Big Bang, a theory to which most leading cosmologists now adhere, he forced its proponents to work harder to counter his objections, proving that an able opposition can be your best friend, that a powerful opponent is a blessing, not a curse.
“The steady state model, which Hoyle supported so strongly, really put the Big Bang to the test,” said Margaret Geller, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. “I think the existence of an alternative spurred many tests both on the observational and the theoretical side.”
The universe didn’t begin with a huge explosion, Hoyle and others believed, but rather was in a state of constant creation, with galaxies continually separating.
Alan Lightman, a physicist and author who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who interviewed Hoyle for his 1990 book “Origins,” said the late astronomer was “one of the most brilliant and controversial figures in science. He was a prickly character. He was opinionated, and difficult in the way all opinionated people are.”
Naming the Big Bang wasn’t a big deal to Hoyle, Lightman said. “He didn’t think that was all that profound. He didn’t invent it or develop it; he just gave it a name that stuck. But that was totally insignificant to his real work.”
That work, Lightman said, included proving that helium was created just as the universe itself was taking shape, and that the stars were factories for creating other elements. Even his later, somewhat wacky theories, such as an unshakable belief that viruses were deposited on Earth by extraterrestrials, could not diminish his early achievements, Lightman said.
“When you do something correct in science, it’s correct even if later on you do something incorrect.”
The making of planets
Scott Kenyon, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, noted that Hoyle was the first person to ascertain the minimum mass necessary to make planets. “People who study star formations owe a lot to Hoyle,” Kenyon said.
And despite his reputation as a quarrelsome, unpleasant man, he was a “truly extraordinary storyteller,” recalled Geller, who once shared a dinner table with him at a scientific conference in Bologna, Italy. “He was a magnetic personality. Everyone was captivated.”
His science fiction books included “Black Cloud” (1957). He also wrote a TV series called “A for Andromeda” and a play, “Rockets in Ursa Major,” both in 1962.
In his 1994 autobiography, “Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist’s Life,” Hoyle described his childhood in Yorkshire, son of a wool merchant. The argumentative nature was apparent early: “Between the ages of five and nine, I was almost perpetually at war with the educational system,” Hoyle wrote. In a caption for a photograph of himself as a bright, smiling toddler, he noted, “Here I am in early childhood, evidently persuaded in the mistaken belief that the world is a better place than I ever subsequently found it to be.”
Loved his work
But it can’t have been all that bad, because Hoyle seemed to relish his work, even when it was controversial. He and a colleague, Chandra Wickramasinghe, produced theories on the physics of stars and galaxies that were so irksome to other researchers that, the joke went, some had a special key installed on their computers that would automatically add the phrase, “Contrary to the views of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe . . . .” He was knighted in 1972.
It was his very churlishness, though, that made him special, Ferris said. “He championed unpopular work and made his colleagues think and challenge their own beliefs, if only to defend them against Sir Fred’s skepticism.”
Even the later theories about aliens colonizing Earth won’t affect his stature as a giant of 20th Century science, Ferris said. Nor will his reputation as a tough customer.
“Despite the working-class accent and rough-edged personality and international celebrity and the science fiction writing and all that, one is dealing with a tenacious and subtle mind,” Ferris said. “There was nothing fluffy about Fred Hoyle.”
His opposition to the Big Bang was rooted in more than mere physics, Ferris added. “He felt it represented the percolation of religious yearnings into science. It’s fair to say he was concerned, as many cosmologists are, to safeguard against that. Cosmology traditionally has been subject to infusions and infections by theological and philosophical ideas that have no place in rigorous scientific inquiry.”
Hoyle was a visionary in a business that, for all of its alleged focus on the future, often seems to be a tightly knit group of likeminded people.
“Science is conservative,” Geller said. “Hoyle wasn’t.”
More Top Picks Nerdchef 3 8 Steel Stone