Geoffrey Burbidge says that Hoyle "certainly solved the problem of the origin of the elements." As he recalls it, however, B2FH "was very much a collaboration." Hoyle, he says, was not the type to leave something important out of a paper just because editing it was a little time-consuming.
One thing everybody agrees on is that Hoyle was shortchanged in 1983, when Fowler shared the Nobel Prize in Physics (with Subramanyan Chandrasekhar) for his work on nucleosynthesis. Clayton says the Nobel Committee's decision probably had more to do with Hoyle's rejection of scientific orthodoxy than any missing equation.
"Fred marginalized himself," Clayton says. "He made himself look like a sorehead who only cared about the steady state universe and life from outer space. … He made himself look foolish."
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3 Comments
Add CommentIt seems to me that Sir Fred's ideas about life's extraterrestrial origin are gaining credibility all the time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Big Bang as we now know it did not exist in 1953 when Hoyle submitted his paper. The hot Big Bang came after the discovery of the 3K microwave background. Hoyle's creativity burst out of a near vacuum of ideas about the origin of the elements. Only a series of neutron captures in an initial universe full of neutrons had been proposed, and that did not work. Hoyle's genius was to see that massive stars MUST WORK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Prior to Hoyle's work, most experts believed that the elements had been born in a flurry of nuclear fusion during the big bang”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBang on, I should say, that is, as per also Sir Fred Hoyle’s associate, Dr Geoffrey Burbidge (http://creation.com/big-bang-faith-burbidge or Burbidge, G., Why only one big bang? Scientific American, 266(2):96.), in a set of little big bangs (and little big crunches) in what I call Cosmic Cores that dot our universe, like atomic nuclei do in a body of matter.
While in the UK, I wrote to Sir Fred since my own perspective on the evolution of the cosmos resonated more with his view than that of any other ‘experts’ in the field of cosmology; and I felt deeply honored to receive his handwritten letter in response (which I now treasure dearly). Quite understandably, due to time constraint (he was working on what would be his last book), he was unable to comment constructively on my paper (www.sittampalam.net/Synopsis.htm).
In science, especially in physics - the bedrock of science - truth will emerge supreme, as it rightly should, with continued observations with ever-improving instruments and cutting-edge techniques.
Cheers!