I was fortunate to get my hands on Jayant Narlikar's science fiction books as a schoolboy. Narlikar, as you might know is a cosmologist of international repute, and also a well known popularizer of science (he has won the Kalinga prize given by UNESCO for popularization of science). In preface of one of his books (Yakshanchi Denagi I think) he expounds his views about science fiction, what it should be, and how he came to it. He tells us that his idol in this field is his mentor, who is also a well known astrophysicist and science popularizer. That's how I came to know Fred Hoyle.
Fred Hoyle was one of 20th century's great astrophysicists. He is remembered today for the B2FH paper (named after the initials of its authors, Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler and Fred Hoyle) which explained how heavier (than helium) elements get formed inside stars. He was also a co-founder of steady state cosmology, which was a chief rival of big bang theory in its earliest days. According to this theory, universe is expanding, and the intervening space gets continiously filled with new matter, so universe always looks the same (so called 'perfect cosmological principle'). Interestingly, it was Hoyle who gave the name 'big bang' to what was then known as 'evolutionary cosmology'. Critics later claimed this to be an attempt at ridicule, but Hoyle said he was just trying to be vivid. And the name stuck. He did for science popularization on Radio what Sagan later did on Television. But in later life, Hoyle came to champion a host of unpopular, and deemed by many to be unscientific, ideas. I will quote just one, that disease causing bacteria are being bombarded on earth from space, and these are the main source of mutations. He went as far as to claim that interstellar clouds are swarms of bacteria. He was ridiculed and criticised but he never compromised on things that he considered right.
But why this post today? Well, because I recently finished reading a biography of Hoyle (Fred Hoyle's Universe, by Jane Gregory). Good points first, the book is well researched, and quite extensive. It is light on technical points (too light I think), but that may be considered a plus by some. My main complain is that the author spends a disproportionate amount of time on the beurocratic details of things in Hoyle's life, e.g. details like the names of all the people who formed a comittee when Hoyle was leading an effort for building a large telescope. Such details might be important from a scholarly point of view, but too much of it wearied me down. Reducing this coverage might have shortened the book by 1/4th, and made it much more readable. This is the first biography of Hoyle that I read, so I am not sure if this is the best one. Hoyle's life itself remains worth knowing about at any rate.
Fred Hoyle was one of 20th century's great astrophysicists. He is remembered today for the B2FH paper (named after the initials of its authors, Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler and Fred Hoyle) which explained how heavier (than helium) elements get formed inside stars. He was also a co-founder of steady state cosmology, which was a chief rival of big bang theory in its earliest days. According to this theory, universe is expanding, and the intervening space gets continiously filled with new matter, so universe always looks the same (so called 'perfect cosmological principle'). Interestingly, it was Hoyle who gave the name 'big bang' to what was then known as 'evolutionary cosmology'. Critics later claimed this to be an attempt at ridicule, but Hoyle said he was just trying to be vivid. And the name stuck. He did for science popularization on Radio what Sagan later did on Television. But in later life, Hoyle came to champion a host of unpopular, and deemed by many to be unscientific, ideas. I will quote just one, that disease causing bacteria are being bombarded on earth from space, and these are the main source of mutations. He went as far as to claim that interstellar clouds are swarms of bacteria. He was ridiculed and criticised but he never compromised on things that he considered right.
But why this post today? Well, because I recently finished reading a biography of Hoyle (Fred Hoyle's Universe, by Jane Gregory). Good points first, the book is well researched, and quite extensive. It is light on technical points (too light I think), but that may be considered a plus by some. My main complain is that the author spends a disproportionate amount of time on the beurocratic details of things in Hoyle's life, e.g. details like the names of all the people who formed a comittee when Hoyle was leading an effort for building a large telescope. Such details might be important from a scholarly point of view, but too much of it wearied me down. Reducing this coverage might have shortened the book by 1/4th, and made it much more readable. This is the first biography of Hoyle that I read, so I am not sure if this is the best one. Hoyle's life itself remains worth knowing about at any rate.
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