Date: March 30, 2010

Title: Fred Hoyle, Quintessential 20th Century Scientist

Play

Podcaster: Craig Robertson

Link: Craig’s website – www.myfavoriteauthor.net

Description: Fred Hoyle was one of the legitimate giants of 20th Century astronomy. His contributions included mechanisms for the synthesis of elements heavier than lithium, gas accretion, the internal structures of stars, and a novel hypothesis for the origins of the universe. He was also considered a crank by many, holding to quasi-scientific convictions at the detriment of his reputation. Controversial, yes, interesting, yes, under valued, well just listen and decide for yourself.

Bio: Craig Robertson is a physician in the Sacramento, CA area, and science fiction author. In the 1970’s he studied astronomy and geophysics at UC Berkeley. In addition to his busy Internal Medicine practice, he has written several science fiction novels available on Podiobooks.com as podcasts, and as ebooks on Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s sites. His lifelong love of astronomy keeps him young at heart and continually challenges him to maintain an open mind and a sharp wit. He can be contacted at his website, www.myfavoriteauthor.net.

Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by — no one. We still need sponsors for many days in 2010, so please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.

Transcript:

Fred Hoyle, Quintessential 20th Century Scientist

Hello, this is Craig Robertson, author of the novels Anon Time and The Innerglow effect, available as free audiobooks from Podiobooks.com. I am presenting my third 365 DoA podcast, and I’d like to thank Nancy and the team for their warm support and gracious assistance. Today I present a brief biography of a childhood hero of mine, Fred Hoyle. Not too many people would admit having Professor Hoyle as their hero, but he was and I do. When I was a budding young astronomer, he was a reasonable candidate to be idolized, but there were very many giants of the field mid century to choose from also. What impressed me about him then was his accessibility as one who actively popularized the sciences, the clarity of his message, and the unconventional way he approached a problem. He seemed to me to be free from the affect and stuffiness an academician was supposed to have. The fact that he churned out a lot of excellent science fiction didn’t hurt my fan status either. It was just these characteristics of popularist, free thinker, novelist, and iconoclast which made him one of the more controversial scientists of his era. These factors have contributed to his uncertain ranking in the pantheon of the geniuses laying the foundation of the modern physical sciences during the last century. I hope an examination of his contributions and his methods will help those who know him only as an historic figure better understand his legacy.

Fred was born in Yorkshire England in 1915. His father was a variably successful businessman, finding his greatest success in the wool trade. His mother was a classically trained musician who chose not to pursue a career, but taught lessons and played in a silent movie house to help ends meet. The uncertain nature of the family’s income greatly effected the continuity of Fred’s early education. These financial challenges were greatly aggravated by Hoyle confessing that, “Between the ages of 5 and 9, I was perpetually at war with the education system.” He also says of one school that he was, “No longer prepared to have irrelevant knowledge poured into my head by the old beldame who ran the place.” His rebellion extended to the cleaver crafting of a several month long period of truancy at age 8. Needless to say, he performed poorly on his early testing. In spite of his rejection of schooling, he was spirited in educating himself. He studied a chemistry book his father owned, and avidly read Stars and Atoms, a 1927 astronomy standard. These self-guided studies sparked an interest in attending university, but his parent’s marginal finances meant he’d only move on with his education if he won a scholarship. His spotty formal education made this a challenge. He missed out on studying chemistry at Leeds narrowly in 1932, and returned to his grammar school to improve. There he raised his sights, determined now to test for a scholarship at Cambridge. Weak mathematics performance caused him to miss on the Emmanuel College exam, but he did qualify for Pembroke College scholarship. Unfortunately, there were no additional openings there for scholarship winners, so he missed out again. Ultimately he did enter Emmanuel in 1933, focusing first on mathematics. He is quoted as remarking that to be an outstanding scientist one needed first to become an outstanding mathematician. He really came into his own at Cambridge. He was taught by the likes of Dirac, Eddigntin, and Born, won prestigious prizes, and by 1939 published his first major paper on quantum electrodynamics. Though he completed the work for his Ph.D., his supervisor Maurice Pryce persuaded him not to submit for it. Pyrce did not approve of the Ph.D. degree which was new to the school. Hence, aside from honorary degrees, he was Professor not Doctor Hoyle.

His first research effort in astronomy was a mathematical modeling of the accretion of gas by large bodies with significant gravitational pulls. He also worked successfully also on beta decay. Then came WWII. He later said, “War would change everything. It would destroy my comparative affluence; it would swallow my best creative period, just as I was finding my feet in research.” However, serendipity and fate being as capricious as they are, Hoyle benefited from the period. After the war broke out, he was assigned to the Admiralty and put in a research team perfecting radar. It is here that he met and worked closely with Herman Bondi and Thomas Gold, his co-developers of the Steady-State Theory of the universe. Various versions of the moment of inspirations for the trio involve the horror movie Dead of Night. The great Cambridge astronomer Donald Lynden-Bell relates that Fred was asked a question about the origins of primordial hydrogen at a seminar he presented. He pondered the question, and shared it with Gold and Bondi. Later they went to see this movie, and dazed upon exiting, Gold remarked that perhaps the origins of hydrogen might have something in common with the recurring drama of the movie. It was shortly after this the three came up with their Steady State Theory, proving to any who might doubt it how useful low budget entertainment can be in theoretical cosmology.

After the war, he returned to Cambridge as a Junior Lecturer in Mathematics. From 1945-48 he published three seminal article concerning stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, The Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen, Note on the Origin of Cosmic Rays, and On the Integration of the Equations Determining the Structure of a Star. His first of two papers outlining his Steady State theory in were published in 1948. Briefly, this vision of the universe accounted for the expansion reported by Hubble, yet depicted a uniform unchanging totality. Existence was continually refilled by the creation of new protons at a slow fixed rate for a “Creation Field. The C-field had a negative pressure so that energy could be conserved and the expansion driven. These feature of the field anticipated the later development of cosmic inflation.

Hoyle narrated a widely popular program in England for Radio 3 about astronomy where he further popularized his Steady State. It was on this program, on 3/28/1949 that he coined the term ‘big bang’ to help the audience better understand the opposing theory concerning the origins of the universe. In later years he claims it was meant as a pejorative, mocking the idea. The link to see his typed script [on page 4] of that important moment can be found in this text at 365 Days of Astronomy’s website: www.joh.cam.ac.uk/cms_pcf/common/zen/albums/fred-hoyle-an-online-exhibition/script_big1.jpg. These lectures were consolidated into a popular book, Nature of the Universe.

Probably Hoyle’s most important work came from his collaborations with William Fowler, and the couple Geoffrey and Margaret Burbridge regarding the origins of elements heavier than lithium. Gamov had theorized how hydrogen and helium were generated by the big bang, but he could not account for the heavier elements. It was generally assumed the elements past lithium were somehow generated by nuclear fusion during the Big Bang. Hoyle reasoned the problem in the reverse. He noted that there were vastly larger amounts of carbon in the universe than could have been produced in the brief time the Big Bang was hot enough. To produce the observed quantities of carbon, he theorized nucleosynthesis occurred in stars 10 times more massive than the Sun. In such red giants, enough of the ultra-short lived 8-berylium would be present for a collision with helium to produce a resonant state of carbon. This excited carbon then decayed by gamma release to the stable form so abundant today. After theorizing this previously unknown state of carbon, while at Caltech, Hoyle went to Fowler and asked his help. Fowler was initially reluctant to assist the pushy Englishman with a strange accent, but quickly realized the significance of the ideas he espoused. Lengthy experiments lead to the creation of the exited carbon state exactly where Hoyle predicted it would be. Though Fowler specifically credited Hoyle with the idea, he was the only one to win the Nobel Prize in 1983 for this work. Many suggest Hoyle’s exclusion was based on his other unorthodox theories and practices, rather than his lack of scientific contribution.

Hoyle was an energetic organizer as well as researcher. He helped create Cambridge’s Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, the Anglo-Australian Observatory in New South Wales, and served on many important international committees. He was knighted in 1972. Along with his efforts in research, academics, and astronomy popularization, as mentioned before he was a prolific author of science fiction novels. Some were quite well received, and I myself have read some and toughly enjoyed them. The Black Cloud, A for Andromeda, and October the First Is Too Late are probably his best known works of fiction.

A fertile mind and boundless energy were defining characteristic of Hoyle, leading to his great achievements. Unfortunately the same qualities also lead to academic ridicule and ultimately to his relatively less than stellar reputation among the powers-that-be of his era. His personality could rub many the wrong way, a dubious attribute for success in academics. His longstanding feud with Martin Ryle did little to help his reputation. Ryle supported the Big Bang theory, so they were natural intellectual opponents. Hoyle carried it a bit farther than scholarly debate. After Ryle won the Nobel Prize, Hoyle publically accused Ryle’s work to have been done by a junior member of his team. He also wrote an unflattering poem about Ryle and generally went well out of his way to mock Ryle’s work.

Hoyle star further faded in the 1960’s when it became clear the Big Bang theory was superior to his Steady State. Ryle demonstrated that the distribution of quasars was not even, so Hoyle’s uniform universe could not be true. As the cosmic microwave radiation background was established, something Big Bang predicted and Steady State did not, many felt it was time for Fred to accept the evidence and disavow his stance. He most decidedly did not. He held to his theory unfailingly, modifying it some, and assailing the Big Bang till the end. He constructed obtuse arguments to account for the CMB, like iron whiskers expelled by supernovae as generating the signal. His refusal to accept new evidence and alter his world-view was regarded as intellectual sour grapes. This came on top of other practices which traditionalists regarded as suspect. His popularization of astronomy along with his fiction writing were felt by some to be beneath a proper academic.

Were these Hoyle’s only peccadilloes he might have been regarded and remembered more favorably. He strayed far from mainstream science boldly, and espoused positions which lead to much disdain from his peers. Perhaps the most remarkable idea his name became dubiously connected with was his belief in panspermia. He felt the chances of life originating spontaneously on Earth were so remote as to be impossible. Life, he maintained must have arrived here from extra-terrestrial sources. This in and of itself might not have been so damning to his reputation if he had not extended the conviction to include current day causation of maladies. When members of a convention came down en mass with some viral condition, he suggested it was rained down on them from outer space. He claimed Bovine Spongeophorm Encephelitis (BSE), mad cow disease, was a result of particles raining down through the atmosphere in winter To compound the ill effects of this belief, he went on to articulate that, “Once we see that life is cosmic it is sensible to suppose that intelligence is cosmic.” His association with Intelligent Design made his panspermia argument intellectually less appealing, and he was vague as to what he meant by this design. It was clearly not God acting in a Judeo-Christian manner, making it even less palatable for most. Hoyle talked of a super intelligent extraterrestrial group designing life, and using panspermia to distribute it. He recognized evolution occurred, but did not believe Darwin’s theory. On another occasion he questioned the authenticity of the transitional fossil Archaeopteryx, between dinosaur and bird, though he had not training in paleontology.

In the end, Fred Hoyle will remain an enigmatic giant of 20th century science. His brilliant contributions are undeniable, yet he marginalized himself with his unorthodoxy and stubborn stances. He will however be remembered. A colorful figure often generates interesting anecdotes and Hoyle had his share. He resigned his beloved Cambridge in 1972 out of profound frustration with the politics practiced there. He said, “I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win.” Heralding of his many run-ins with the scientific establishment, he stated, “To achieve anything really worth while in research it is necessary to go against the opinions of one’s fellows.” His credo was, “I don’t see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible.” Perhaps the best summary of his iconoclastic approach to science came at a lunch at Caltech. Burbridge, Maarten Schmitt, Fowler, and Richard Feynmen were present. Hoyle remarked, “I reckon we’re doing well if we bat .500.” By this he meant that he was perfectly satisfied with being right only half the time. His colleagues were aghast. They suggested that they would be ashamed to get one out of every two things wrong. But Fred Hoyle was not ashamed of his mistakes. It defines his philosophy, and perhaps clarifies why he interfaced so roughly with the world around him. He was a genius whose accomplishments were monumental, and if his personality was outlandish and off put some, I imagine he’d say so much the better. Thank you for listening and I’d love to hear any feedback you might have. You can do so at 365 DoA, or my website: www.myfavoriteauthor.net. Until next time, vayan con Dios mis amigos.

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Astrosphere New Media Association. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.