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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
CONFLICT IN THE COSMOS
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
CONFLICT IN THE COSMOS
FRED HOYLE’S LIFE IN SCIENCE
SIMON MITTON
Joseph Henry Press
Washington, D.C.
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
Joseph Henry Press
500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
The Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academies Press, was created with the goal of making books on science, technology, and health more widely available to professionals and the public. Joseph Henry was one of the founders of the National Academy of Sciences and a leader in early American science.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mitton, Simon, 1946-
Conflict in the cosmos : Fred Hoyle’s life in science / Simon Mitton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-09313-9 (cloth with jacket)
ISBN 0-309-10200-6 (paperback)
1. Hoyle, Fred, Sir. 2. Astronomers—Great Britain—Biography. 3. Expanding universe. 4. Cosmology. I. Title.
QB36.H75M58 2005
520′.92—dc22
2004030638
Copyright 2005 by Simon Mitton. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
For Jacqueline, Lavinia, and Veronica
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
Contents
Foreword
ix
Prologue
xiii
1
An End—and a Beginning
1
2
To the Frontiers of the Universe: Training for Cosmology
27
3
The Star Makers
59
4
Hoyle’s Secret War
83
5
The Nature of the Universe
113
6
Lives of the Stars
149
7
Clash of Titans
177
8
Origin of the Chemical Elements
211
9
Matters of Gravity
239
10
Mountains to Climb
275
11
The Watershed
299
12
Stones, Bones, Bugs, and Accidents
317
Notes
349
Bibliography
369
Acknowledgments
379
Index
383
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
Foreword
As Simon Mitton makes abundantly clear in the brilliantly illuminating biography that follows, Fred Hoyle was the quintessential outsider, entering Emmanuel College Cambridge from an impoverished family background and with a distinct Yorkshire accent, and leaving Cambridge in a misguided huff 39 years later. But in between he ascended into the highest ranks of British science, almost single-handedly returning Britain to the top echelons of international theoretical astrophysics and setting it on the path toward excellence in observational astronomy. It is a stirring Dickensian story of an inquisitive, rough-hewn lad making the grade in the tightly traditional world of Cantabrigian academia, yet with the depths of a Greek tragedy where the flawed hero finally becomes an outcast.
Fred Hoyle first came into my purview when I, as a young editorial assistant at Sky and Telescope magazine, read about Hoyle’s The Nature of the Universe (1950) in Frank Edmondson’s highly critical review. I learned there that Hoyle was a proponent of a dubious continuous creation cosmological theory, but I did not discover that he had just invented the term “big bang.” I first met him at the 1961 Berkeley meeting of the International Astronomical Union—I have a slide of him and Geoff and Margaret Burbidge from there. After that I occasionally
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saw him in Cambridge, England, or at other international meetings. The last time I spoke with Fred was at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in November 1981, when he had come to sign the roll book of this venerable American academy.
Some of Fred’s prolific popular writing found its way to my bookshelves. His prodigious output at the height of his creative activity included a book on Stonehenge (1977) and one on Copernicus (1973). Both are idiosyncratic and rather forgettable, yet each contains a memorable idea. By providing an alternative to Gerry Hawkins’ explanation of the 56 Aubrey holes at Stonehenge, Fred Hoyle inadvertently demonstrated that rational reconstructions of how megalithic observatories could have functioned were by no means unique and hence neither his nor Hawkins’ was necessarily the right solution for the prehistoric use of the site. And with respect to Copernicus, he argued from relativity theory that it was an empty question to ask whether it was the earth or the sun that moved—except that in the earth’s reference frame the equations would have been too difficult for sensible progress. More useful was his Ten Faces of the Universe (1977); in one of the essays, dealing with the problem of the earth’s energy futures, Hoyle argued that if our destiny was the collapse of civilization through overpopulation, then the sooner the better to avoid the extinction of the human race. This essay became required reading in my introductory science course at Harvard.
In the fall of 1977 I worked at the Cambridge Observatories on the Source Book in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1900–1975 that I was editing with Ken Lang. Hoyle was one of a comparatively few authors (including Eddington, Russell, and Hubble) who had more than one paper in the final cut for the Source Book. Many articles had to be abridged, as was especially the case with the famous 108-page “B+FH” paper on nucleosynthesis (coauthored by the Burbidges and Willy Fowler), but at least we could represent what was Hoyle’s most cited and surely most influential paper.
Unquestionably one aspect of the frequently negative reception of Hoyle’s earlier The Nature of the Universe were his hostile remarks on traditional Christianity, seen as gratuitous by his critics. Yet his com-
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ment near the end of his account that “It strikes me as very curious that the Christians have so little to say about how they propose eternity should be spent” was fair and thought-provoking. Within a decade rumors flew that nothing had shaken Fred’s atheism as much as his prediction and subsequent discovery of the resonance state of the carbon nucleus, which makes possible the substantial abundance of that element and consequently the possibility of carbon-based life in the universe, including Hoyle himself. In fact, Fred wrote in the November 1981 issue of the Cal Tech alumni magazine that
Would you not say to yourself, “Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.” Of course you would…. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.
From time to time I had sat with Fred, generally discussing one historical issue or another, but I never asked him about the role of a superintelligence in the universe. Yet a decade later he expressed much the same view in closing a discussion on the origin of the universe and the origin of religion:
The issue of whether the universe is purposive is an ultimate question that is at the back of everybody’s mind…. And Dr. [Ruth Nanda] Ashen has now just raised exactly the same question as to whether the universe is a product of thought. And I have to say that that is also my personal opinion, but I can’t back it up by too much of precise argument. There are very many aspects of the universe where you either have to say there have been monstrous coincidences, which there might have been, or, alternatively, there is a purposive scenario to which the universe conforms.
I wish I had had something like Simon Mitton’s stimulating, sensitive, and sympathetic story much earlier, as I now realize that besides this question that are many other issues that I would have liked to have discussed with him. Alas, the opportunity is lost.
But we do now have this well-researched evaluation, Conflict in the Cosmos, which should convince most readers that Fred Hoyle was truly
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one of the creative giants of twentieth-century astronomy, that he deserved a share of the 1983 Nobel Prize, and that if he had not been so outspoken, he may well have received it.
Owen Gingerich
Cambridge, Massachusetts
December 2004
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
Prologue
In the nineteenth century, savants in England had continuously improved the science of astronomy, bringing it to a high professional level by the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. In January 1820, 14 gentlemen and scholars, one of them the future computer pioneer Charles Babbage, had founded the Royal Astronomical Society, which received its Royal Charter from King William IV in 1831. Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, the builder of giant telescopes, and the most accomplished sidereal observer of his age, became the society’s first president. In 1834, the British government provided the society with suitable premises free of charge, an arrangement that continued uninterrupted until 2004. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge had important observatories from 1794 and 1823, respectively, together with endowed professorships. At Greenwich, the Royal Observatory, one of the world’s oldest scientific institutions, flourished in the age of Queen Victoria and was noted for its accurate observations of the positions of stars. In 1884, an international conference in Washington, D.C., convoked by President Chester Arthur of the United States, selected Greenwich as the world’s prime meridian.
By the early twentieth century, British astronomy could hold its head high: A small community of professionals at the Royal Observatories and in the ancient universities conducted world-class research.
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Furthermore, they encouraged the development of astronomy in the dominions of the British Empire, with the establishment of observatories in Australia, Canada, and South Africa, where the practitioners still looked to Greenwich for guidance.
After World War I, observational astronomers in the United States began to advance on their British colleagues. By 1917, the Americans had the world’s largest telescope, the 100-inch reflector at Mount Wilson, as well as far superior observing conditions and generous funding from curious philanthropists. Britain, meanwhile, had suffered the dreadful slaughter of her young men in the war, followed by a deep and prolonged economic catastrophe, the slump. Although there were golden years for the physicists, particularly those in Cambridge, who won a string of Nobel Prizes by prising open the atom and its nucleus for their inner secrets, astronomy was in decline. British astronomers suffered from a failure to invest in new telescopes at home, as well as a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the long sea voyages needed to reach the cloudless skies of His Majesty’s dominions. In 1944, with the untimely death of Sir Arthur Eddington, British theoretical astronomy lost the brightest astrophysicist of his generation.
Defense research during World War II drained the young talent from Britain’s dozen or so better universities. Pure research in physics and mathematics became the pursuit of the older men who had survived the killing fields of the Somme in the previous conflict. A certain amount of astronomical research continued at bomb-strewn Greenwich because of the British Navy’s requirement to maintain the expertise of astronomers for navigational and time-keeping purposes. When the university scientists were finally released from their secret war, they returned to laboratories and faculty buildings overflowing with students whose education had been suspended during the war. Furthermore, yet another economic crisis led to severe shortages of food, fuel, and equipment. By the middle of the twentieth century, astronomy in the United States was far ahead of that of Great Britain. The 200-inch telescope at Palomar had commenced observations in 1948, research on atomic weapons had produced highly trained teams of experimenters and theorists, the electronics industry was thriving, and the fledgling computer industry was rapidly growing.
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Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle’s Life in Science
Fred Hoyle completely transformed British astronomy in the quarter century beginning about 1950. By turns, Fred Hoyle startled and charmed his public with a copious stream of new ideas, implausible theories, and an innovative approach to research. While most of his professional colleagues specialized in a single area of research, such as comets, or the evolution of stars, or the nature of sunspots, Hoyle’s approach had more in common with the leading intellectuals of the Enlightenment. He regarded the entire celestial realm—the universe and all its contents no less—as being within the compass of his enquiries. Naturally, this would bring him in conflict with those members of the academy who had a strong sense of ownership of their respective specialties.
By his example, he led a despondent research community away from a fading tradition, directing them instead toward the extraordinary richness and diversity of the new astrophysics that began to emerge in the 1960s. In the 1970s, thanks in good measure to his inspiration, as well as his considerable skill during the short period in which he directed, at the national level, the policy for astronomy research, Britain again became a world leader in the astronomical sciences. Many other distinguished astronomers played an equal, and some a superior, role to Hoyle’s in advancing research expertise, thereby recovering Britain’s international prestige. Such a claim is certainly true of Britain’s radio astronomers, Britain’s space research community, and those applied mathematicians who chose astrophysics and cosmology as their research areas. It is also important to recognize that the professional community as a whole, working through both the Royal Astronomical Society and the funding agencies, persuaded successive governments to increase the provision for jobs, new telescopes, and expensive space missions. Hoyle’s personal contribution to the rebirth of British astronomy came from his outstanding ability to think outside the box, and his unfailing loyalty to international collaborations at a time when many British researchers regarded American astronomers as the competition rather than an opportunity.
An enduring feature of Hoyle’s character was that in every sense he never let setbacks, rejections, or political maneuvers deflect him from his own research agenda. He always had a deep conviction that in
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his “search for the truth,” which is how he expressed his life’s mission, any opponent should be able to provide a counterargument from experiment or direct observation. He declined all opposition based on semantic arguments invoking the philosophy of science, or the deployment of a paradigm, or appeals to common sense. After all, as an undergraduate he had learned general relativity and quantum mechanics from two masters, Eddington and Paul Dirac. From both professors, he understood that accepting what is obvious could not enable him to discover the nature of the physical world.
After 1950, Fred Hoyle was a very public figure at home and abroad. In the 1960s, “according to Hoyle” became a catch phrase in discussions of the latest news from the cosmos. His broadcasts for the BBC in 1950 were just extraordinary and brought him immediate fame as a gifted expositor. With his gritty Yorkshire manner, his ability to be picturesque using words alone, and the universe itself as his topic, he transformed the BBC’s approach to academic lectures, persuading them of the benefits of a less donnish style of presentation.
His lectures for radio audiences set the prelude for a brilliant parallel career as a popular science and science fiction writer. In the former genre, he followed his hero Eddington, soaring over the latter as a truly best-selling author. In science fiction, his first novel, The Black Cloud, remains his best, having now acquired cult status: In 2004, an opinion poll conducted by the British newspaper The Guardian to find the most accomplished science fiction writers placed Hoyle in third position!
Unfortunately, Hoyle’s university career came to an undignified end in 1972 when a series of decisions by the University of Cambridge gave him the profound impression that envious colleagues had conspired behind his back to push him out. The publicity resulting from his resignation delivered a seismic shock to British astronomy, but fortunately, the professional community, by now large and diverse, quickly persuaded their political paymasters that all was well.
Fred Hoyle had a very considerable influence on my own career. I cannot claim, unlike many astronomers of my generation, to have been attracted into the subject by his radio broadcasts. My own trajectory started in high school with evening classes and then the opportunity to use the telescope of the Leicester Astronomical Society. As an under-
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graduate at the University of Oxford, I was strongly attracted to nuclear physics, where happenstance brought me into contact with Rudolph Peierls, who had taught Hoyle nuclear physics (but I did not know that at the time). Like Fred Hoyle, I chose astronomy rather than nuclear physics as a career. In 1968, the then-recent discovery of pulsars became the magnet that drew me to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where my doctoral research involved daily contact with the radio astronomer Martin Ryle, Hoyle’s archrival. After I completed my Ph.D., I had the distressing experience of a very sharp disagreement with Ryle, which led to my resignation from his group. Quite quickly, Fred Hoyle threw me a lifeline by offering a temporary position in his Institute of Theoretical Astronomy. This post brought me into contact with his associates and students. A few months after Hoyle’s 1972 resignation, it was my fortune to be appointed to a management position in the new Institute of Astronomy, which enabled me to refresh and expand my network of Hoyle contacts. But for Fred Hoyle’s initial appointment, I would not have been able to progress to such a satisfying career at Cambridge.
In researching and writing this biography, I privately compared Hoyle to Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein. These latter were achievers on a timescale that repeats only over the centuries rather than over a generation for the next decisive move forward. What is extraordinary about Fred Hoyle’s science is that his impact derives equally from when he was right and when he was wrong! Generally within academia, an erroneous paper is quietly forgotten: It receives the silent treatment. Hoyle’s contribution to the advancement of astronomy derived much of its impetus from the way in which his colleagues recoiled at his notions. His opponents deployed enormous resources to wrong-foot him. In the twentieth century, no other figure in astronomy had to withstand for such a long period the criticisms of both the invisible college of astronomers worldwide and the parochial college of Cambridge practitioners. Hoyle’s scientific life was truly a conflict in the cosmos.
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