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Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science
 
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Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science (Hardcover)

by Simon Mitton (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 369 pages
  • Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd (8 April 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1854109618
  • ISBN-13: 978-1854109613
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.4 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 470,091 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
The first astronomer to publicize his subject on radio and television, Sir Fred Hoyle rose to national prominence in the 1950s as a result of his controversial ideas on the origins of the universe. Famous for his work on the thermonuclear reactions inside stars that made possible the beginnings of life, he developed the 'steady state' theory of the universe, soon challenged by the rival 'big bang' theory, which led to a bitter dispute between Hoyle and his rivals - not only fellow scientists but also archaeologists and palaeontologists whose conclusions he had challenged. This is a major scientific biography of one of the greatest, and best-known, scientists of the twentieth century, written in an enjoyable and accessible style.

About the Author
Simon Mitton is Senior Fellow of St Edmund's College Cambridge and has been, for the past twenty years, astronomy publisher of Cambridge University Press. He knew Hoyle for nearly thirty years and has interviewed many of Hoyle's colleagues and co-workers for this book.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars More right than wrong, 27 Jul 2006
By Charlie T. (Glasgow, Scotland) - See all my reviews
Fred Hoyle is famously remembered for being wrong about the origin of he Universe. But one of the most intriguing things About Simon Mitton's book is the suggestion that he may not have been very wrong, since the maths of his steady state theory matches the maths of the now-fashionable inflation theory. Mitton is good at giving such unexpected insights, although he dwells a little too long on the politics of British science in the 1970s. His story of a man who went his own way through the scientific world would make a great basis for a documentary.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science". Reviewed by Francis A. Andrew. Jordan., 10 Jul 2007
Dr. Simon Mitton has written an excellent biography on the life of the late Sir Fred Hoyle. For those who are interested in the way the science of astronomy has evolved throughout the 20th century and Sir Fred Hoyle's magnificent contribution to its evolution and development, then this book is a must.

The Prologue by Paul Davies and the Forward by the author serve to show the context within which Hoyle conducted his career as a cosmologist - the need to put British astronomy back on the map. Throughout the war and during the post-war years, America was far ahead of any other country in the science of astronomy; Hoyle changed all that and made Cambridge a magnet for budding astronomers from all over the world including the United States . That Simon Mitton starts off the first of the twelve chapters into which his book is divided with Hoyle's resignation in 1972 from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge would seem to highlight this point. Later in the chapter Dr. Mitton follows the regular pattern of most biographers by treating on the birth and formative years of the young Fred Hoyle.

In a superbly interesting and readable style, Dr. Mitton takes the reader through the years of Hoyle's undergraduate life as a student in Cambridge where he encountered some of the great names of the time in science - most notably Sir Arthur Eddington and Paul Dirac. It was during his undergraduate years in Cambridge that Hoyle decided that his career lay in astronomy. During the war years, when Hoyle worked on Radar development at the Admiralty, he continued to develop his interests in astronomy in close co-operation with Raymond A. Lyttleton, Herman Bondi and Thomas Gold. It was with Bondi and Gold that Hoyle in the post war years set forth the concept of a steady state Universe and continuous creation; this challenged the prevailing super-dense model ( the Big Bang ) as an explanation for the origin of the Universe. Dr. Mitton goes on to explain Hoyle's pioneering work in showing how chemical elements are synthesised in the interior of stars.

It could be argued that Simon Mitton has given too much space to the cut and thrust politics involved in astronomy in the UK . This I do not believe is a valid criticism as the problems of bureaucracy and politics in science were among Hoyle's greatest bugbears. In his book "Of Men and Galaxies" Hoyle bemoaned the fact that scientists were spending too much time on non-scientific matters to the detriment of genuine scientific research and innovation. Hoyle was always the unconventional, always the anti-establishment figure, yet the rebel in him consistently veered towards the positive, never the negative. His boyhood truancy from school resulted in his learning much in the area of fluid mechanics by his observation of the operation of the locks on the Leeds-Liverpool canal.

Throughout his life, Hoyle showed a tremendous capacity for hard and productive work; he was a prolific writer not only of scientific fact but of science fiction ( "The Black Cloud" and "A is for Andromeda" ) and politics ( "Man and Materialism" and "A Decade of Decision" )

Hoyle often ventured into areas outside of his own discipline of cosmology and wrote on biology, paleontology and archeology. He is on record as saying that nature does not respect the distinctions between the sciences that academe makes. This principle may well be extended to all the academic disciplines. In his radio talks "The Nature of the Universe", Hoyle quoted Ray Lyttleton as saying that the human brain may be patterned on the Universe. Lyttleton cuts a rather sad figure in Dr. Mitton's book, yet if we consider what a profound and far-reaching statement Lyttleton had made and place it alongside Hoyle's thesis of linkages between the disciplines, then we must ask whether or not there is some connection between neurology and cosmology! Is there thus a blurring in the distinction between the subjective and the objective? Thanks to Hoyle, Lyttleton may be in for some posthumous fame.!

Simon Mitton's biography is a twin volume to Sir Fred's autobiography "Home Is Where The Wind Blows". Hoyle was a man of humility and so his scientific brilliance is very much down-played in "Home", but Dr. Mitton truly brings out in his biography the full genius of Sir Fred Hoyle.
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