Sir Fred Hoyle (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper.

He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory (a term coined by him on BBC Radio) in favor of the "steady-state model", and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth.

[6] His father Ben Hoyle was a violinist and worked in the wool trade in Bradford, and served as a machine gunner in the First World War.

In late 1940, Hoyle left Cambridge to go to Portsmouth to work for the Admiralty on radar research, for example devising a method to get the altitude of incoming aeroplanes.

[13] Hoyle's Cambridge years, 1945–1973, saw him rise to the top of world astrophysics theory, on the basis of a startling originality of ideas covering a wide range of topics.

The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prevent one ever establishing a directed policy - key decisions can be upset by ill-informed and politically motivated committees.

Hoyle was still a member of the joint policy committee (since 1967), during the planning stage for the 150-inch Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales.

After his resignation from Cambridge, Hoyle moved to the Lake District and occupied his time with treks across the moors, writing books, visiting research centres around the world, and working on science ideas (that have been largely rejected).

On 24 November 1997, while hiking across moorlands in west Yorkshire, near his childhood home in Gilstead, Hoyle fell into a steep ravine called Shipley Glen.

Hoyle authored the first two research papers ever published on synthesis of chemical elements heavier than helium by stellar nuclear reactions.

[17] Hoyle's second foundational nucleosynthesis publication,[18] published in 1954, showed that the elements between carbon and iron cannot be synthesized by such equilibrium processes.

He attributed those elements to specific nuclear fusion reactions between abundant constituents in concentric shells of evolved massive, pre-supernova stars.

Famously, in 1957, this group produced the B2FH paper (known for the initials of the four authors) in which the field of nucleosynthesis was organized into complementary nuclear processes.

Those historical arguments were first presented to a gathering of nucleosynthesis experts attending a 2007 conference at Caltech organized after the deaths of both Fowler and Hoyle to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of B2FH.

The large amount of carbon in the universe, which makes it possible for carbon-based life-forms of any kind to exist, demonstrated to Hoyle that this nuclear reaction must work.

Based on this notion, Hoyle therefore predicted the values of the energy, the nuclear spin and the parity of the compound state in the carbon nucleus formed by three alpha particles (helium nuclei), which was later borne out by experiment.

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.

"His co-worker William Alfred Fowler eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 (with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar), but Hoyle's original contribution was overlooked by the electors, and many were surprised that such a notable astronomer missed out.

[32] Hoyle, unlike Gold and Bondi, offered an explanation for the appearance of new matter by postulating the existence of what he dubbed the "creation field", or just the "C-field", which had negative pressure in order to be consistent with the conservation of energy and drive the expansion of the universe.

After considering what he thought of as a very remote possibility of Earth-based abiogenesis he concluded: If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design.

Published in his 1982/1984 books Evolution from Space (co-authored with Chandra Wickramasinghe), Hoyle calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell without panspermia was one in 1040,000.

He claimed: The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.Though Hoyle declared himself an atheist,[38] this apparent suggestion of a guiding hand led him to the conclusion that "a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and ... there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.

"[39] He would go on to compare the random emergence of even the simplest cell without panspermia to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein" and to compare the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cubes simultaneously.

[3] Paul Davies describes how he "loved his maverick personality and contempt for orthodoxy", quoting Hoyle as saying "I don't care what they think" about his theories on discrepant redshift, and "it is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right".

[42] Hoyle often expressed anger against the labyrinthine and petty politics at Cambridge and frequently feuded with members and institutions of all levels of the British astronomy community, leading to his resignation from Cambridge in September 1971 over the way he thought Donald Lynden-Bell was chosen to replace retiring professor Roderick Oliver Redman behind his back.

Hoyle made an off-the-cuff remark to a reporter in Montreal that "Yes, Jocelyn Bell was the actual discoverer, not Hewish, who was her supervisor, so she should have been included."

[25] The 1983 prize went in part to William Alfred Fowler "for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe" despite Hoyle having been the inventor of the theory of nucleosynthesis in the stars with two research papers[51] published shortly after WWII.

[25][53] In his obituary, Nature editor and fellow Briton John Maddox called it "shameful" that Fowler had been rewarded with a Nobel prize and Hoyle had not.

In the play Sur la route de Montalcino, the character of Fred Hoyle confronts Georges Lemaître on a fictional journey to the Vatican in 1957.