Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science [Hardcover]

Simon Mitton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2005

A veritable cult figure to many, Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the most important, famous, and controversial figures of 20th-century astronomy. He coined the term "Big Bang" and earned himself scientific celebrity by enthusiastically endorsing theories that ran counter to conventional wisdom.

Fred Hoyle's prolific career spanned more than 60 years. During that time, he made major contributions in fundamental areas of astronomy. His most important work focused on the evolution of stars, the origin of the chemical elements, the nature of gravitational forces, and the origin of life on Earth. But he is perhaps best remembered for his rare talent as a science communicator. He hosted one of the first radio programs that focused on science and then moved his show to the new medium of television, making him a household name long before such science luminaries as Patrick Moore or Carl Sagan rose to prominence.

A man of ceaseless intellectual activity, Hoyle pushed the boundaries of our knowledge by being both right and wrong. When he was right, his contributions were of Nobel Laureate quality. Indeed, even when he was wrong, he stimulated his exasperated opponents to work that much more furiously to produce damning evidence against him, thus yielding additional discoveries and leading to more knowledge on a topic.

Simon Mitton's sensitive biography tells the story of Hoyle's life as well as his science. Structuring each chapter around an intellectual puzzle, the science is framed within the context of the knowledge available to Hoyle at the time. Drawing on his personal knowledge of Fred Hoyle, Mitton vividly recreates the many public clashes between Hoyle and his critics, and at the same time he clearly explains the science underlying the conflict.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was one of the major figures in 20th-century cosmology, but he's perhaps most famous for being spectacularly wrong, as his steady state theory of the universe, which he clung to inalterably, lost out to the big bang theory (which, ironically, Hoyle named during a talk on the BBC). Hoyle played an important role in the popularization of astronomy through radio, science books and even science fiction novels, which, according to astronomer Minton, drew many future prominent astronomers to the field. Hoyle pioneered research into the explosion of supernovas and how they scatter the heavier elements throughout the galaxies, and he determined how the atoms in our bodies are created in stars' nuclear furnaces, again unwittingly boosting the big bang theory. Minton gives just enough attention to Hoyle's childhood years to show how the youth shaped the man. His account of the educational system at Cambridge when Hoyle arrived in the 1930s will interest Anglophiles, although some readers may skim his blow-by-blows of academic infighting in Hoyle's later years. Minton makes a few minor misstatements (e.g., Einstein first proposed the equivalency of matter and energy in 1905, not 1907). But the author's lively writing and extensive research bring to life this important figure in the development of modern astronomy.
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From Booklist

During the 1950s and 1960s, the late Hoyle (1915-2001) was the Carl Sagan of his day, possibly the best-known scientist in the world. But however much the public thronged to Hoyle's radio broadcasts, popular works of science, and science fiction, his standing in the profession was mixed: Mitton's biography is populated by scientists who tended to either adore or dislike him. Mitton, who knew Hoyle, notes attributes, such as his pugnacity, that grated some, but dwells on the traits that drew many more into his orbit. Apparently he was extraordinarily exciting to work with, possessing an agile intuition that leapt over disciplinary borders. Trained in mathematics and nuclear physics, Hoyle switched to astrophysics and subsequently expounded on paleontology, biology, and archaeology. Mitton most closely tracks Hoyle's work in astrophysics, especially his greatest achievement (the accepted solution to the origin of the elements) and his greatest controversy (opposing big bang cosmology with his steady-state theory). Both, characteristically, were collaborations, and Hoyle, talking science wherever he went, shines brightly in Mitton's appreciation. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 428 pages
• Publisher: Joseph Henry Press (March 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0309093139
• ISBN-13: 978-0309093132
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,836,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an award winning science writer specialising in astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, physics, and the history of science (astronomy). I have an MA degree in Physics from the University of Oxford and a Ph D in physics from the University of Cambridge. My most recent published book is Fred Hoyle: A life in science, which Cambridge U Press re-issued in March 2011. It is regarded as the definitive biography of this famous cosmologist who coined the term The Big Bang to account for the origin of the universe. Ihave just delivered a typescript to Princeton U Press for a book about the origin of structure in the universe.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best way to write about science, April 12, 2005

By 

C. Catherwood "writer" (Cambridge UK and Richmond VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science (Hardcover)

This is the best way to write about science! Although Simon Mitton is a distinguished astronomer, this is science written for anyone intelligent, regardless of background - those of us in the humanities as well as sciences can read this fascinating book with equal enjoyment.

Fred Hoyle was probably wrong on how the universe began, holding to steady state rather than the Big Bang, in which most scientists now believe. But his reasons were perfectly cogent, as Mitton points out. He was also the first true communicator of science to a wide audience, including his brilliant science fiction plays for children that I can still recall over 40 years later. If astronomy is now a cutting edge subject, with considerable lay interest (especially after Mitton and Hoyle's Cambridge colleague Stephe Hawking) it is all because Hoyle was there first.

In short, Mitton has written an outstanding book for all of us. I should also add that the mistakes pointed out in the Publisher's Weekly review have been corrected by the final version - they must have seen proof copies.

Buy this book! Science has become fun for all of us, and Hoyle's pioneering research and communication skills set that ball in motion. Simon Mitton is a worthy follower of his old master, and this book is proof of that.

Christopher Catherwood (author of CHURCHILL'S FOLLY: HOW WINSTON CHURCHILL CREATED MODERN IRAQ: Carroll and Graf, 2004)

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mitton's Hoyle The Stuff Of Which Standard Lives Are Made, September 23, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science (Hardcover)

Reading through CONFLICT IN THE COSMOS, the biography of British astronomer Fred Hoyle, I enjoyed finding out things I never knew before, about science and about Hoyle's own fiction writing. Everyone with an interest in movies knows that the divine Julie Christie emerged during a period of UK filmmaking in the early 1960s that marked a revival of world interest in British cinema, playing very much the contemporary, disaffected "chick" of so-called swinging London. Her subsequent sppearance in Truffaut's FAHRENHEIT 451 was widely regarded as a mis-step, that science fiction wa snot her metier. But as Mitton shows, Christie made her first big breakthrough in a BBC version of Hoyle's "The Nature of the Universe." This series was re-titled A FOR ANDROMEDA, and Hoyle personally selected Julie Christie from a number of pretty girls he viewed at RADA. "That's her!" he exclaimed, and a star was born! So for Christie, FAHRENHEIT 45` was not such an anomaly after all. Mitton treats the matter of Hoyle's relations with film companies with the same cool accuracy with which he handles the more controversial aspects of Hoyle's life.

It was a wonderful life in which he sought to bring back international interest in and prestige for British astronomy after a sorry period in the immediate postwar era. CONFLICT IN THE COSMOS suffers from one fault, a nationalism which perhaps never even occurs to author Mitton, an underlying assumption that what's good for Britain is good for astrophysics and the two things to me don't seem that equivalent.

We see Hoyle as a man with irrational bursts of confidence and indeed over-confidence, with sort of a big mouth that got him into trouble now and again. Mitton carefully details the events of the scandal surrounding Hoyle's ill-timed remarks on the 1974 Nobel award for physics to Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish. When Hoyle publicly stated that "the girl" Jocelyn Bell had been cheated of a third share in the Prize, the fat was really in the fire and an enormous hoopla ignited. Hoyle himself might have lost his chance for a Nobel himself, and as Mitton hints he might very well have had a chance to win it in 1983, had not his intemperate remarks put his hopes in purdah.

And yet he had courage, vision, a brilliance of mind and perception that come along (in astronomy) once every thirty or forty years, and he was unafraid to put his ass on the line when it came to speaking up for causes he believed in. We won't see his like again, and the world is a sadder place since he folded up his telescope and disappeared into starlight.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not so wrong, June 20, 2005

By 

Charlie T. (Glasgow, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science (Hardcover)

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 math of his steady state theory matches the math 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.