Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life [Hardcover]

Fred Hoyle (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 093570227X | ISBN-13: 978-0935702279 | Publication Date: April 1, 1994 | Edition: First Edition

One of this century's most eminent scientist offers a revealing and charming account of his life and work. Mathematician, physicist, astronomer, cosmologist and originator of the term the 'Big Bang'-Sir Fred has always been ready and able to challenge established thinking.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Twentieth-century winds have blown astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle from radar development projects in WW II England to modern cosmology, where his key contributions include naming the Big Bang theory. His memoirs of his early schooling and family life as the son of a Yorkshire wool merchant are as charming as James Herriot's recollections. Hoyle's career, spent mostly at Cambridge University, spans the watershed years of quantum theory in physics and radio astronomy. Ever the reserved English scientist, he raises no more than a bon mot about the exalted company he has kept--Paul Dirac, Sir Arthur Eddington, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, among them--who comprise the first generation to work under the assumptions of relativity. Although this is mainly a memoir, Hoyle offers some model general science writing about his work on the synthesis of heavy elements in star formation. His modesty and quirky attraction to various anthropic theories have kept him in the background for much of his later career, but on these pages, seen against his own firmament, Hoyle blazes bright, as human being and scientist. Photos. $25,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In an autobiography of singular depth, a renowned theoretical physicist recounts his efforts to wrest from the universe its profoundest secrets. Although he was born to a family of modest means--he was the son of a World War I machine gunner--Hoyle so distinguished himself at Cambridge for his mathematical prowess that he was subsequently awarded a high place within the British scientific establishment. Hoyle pursued research interests that brought him in contact with such giants as Eddington, Dirac, and Hubble in Britain and Fermi, Chandra, and Pauli abroad. But it was Hoyle's willingness to stand apart from the scientific establishment, his intellectual daring, that enabled him to fathom supernovas and to predict the existence of quasars. Perhaps because he achieved his breakthroughs in cosmology, the most expansive of the sciences, the author has maintained a refreshingly broad perspective: his memoirs are rich with literary allusion, political shrewdness, and philosophical reflection. Concluding with metaphysical speculations that will challenge the atheist and the fundamentalist alike, Hoyle invites his readers to reassess the meaning of life in an expanding cosmos. Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 443 pages
• Publisher: University Science Books; First Edition edition (April 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 093570227X
• ISBN-13: 978-0935702279
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,507,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Moving sideways like a crab", September 13, 2002

By 

BlueJay54 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (Hardcover)

This is an often-fascinating glimpse into the life of the incomparable Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, cosmologist, panspermicist, sci-fi afficionado, stellar nucleosynthesist and generally mathematician/scientist extraordinaire. I knew of Hoyle's work in stellar nucleosynthesis and steady-state cosmology before, but I came to this book intentionally after reading and thoroughly enjoying his sci-fi novels (especially "The Black Cloud" and "A for Andromeda"). Here, we peer into Hoyle's life as a scientist, beginning with his stubborn truancy in grammar school and continuing with his adolescent chemistry experiments, his work for the British goverment in WWII, his involvement in astronomy and cosmology from the 1950's through the 1970's, and ending with his political duels with stodgy representatives of British institutional science and his critique of Big-Bang theory as sheer metaphysic, indicting all the while fundamentalists of all ilk, Big-bangers and Bible-thumpers alike. His stories are often very funny, and those about Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli (with whom he worked at Cambridge) are truly priceless. However, I always find his prose a bit stilted, and slogging one's way through Hoylistc grammar and obscure British slang can make for some slow, hard reading. Worst of all, several aspects of Hoyle's most interesting and controversial scientific work is completely absent, for example, panspermia (nothing to speak of) and evolutionary genetics (1-2 paragraphs). And despite both the cover photograph and the fact that Hoyle wrote a well-received book on Stonehenge as an ancient observatory, there is not one word about Stonehenge here. What a pity. On the other hand, he does immerse us in his deep distrust of politics and politicians, and even give's us a taste of his surprisingly Vedanta-like spiritual attitude and a kind of Pythagorean wonder at the Universe. The quote in my title is from Hoyle's self-described scientific activity as crab-like, inching foward cautiously over a lifetime. All told, it is a fascinating life-story told by one of the 20th century's greatest scientific iconoclasts.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science and wisdom in a book to be read and reread, July 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (Hardcover)

Of all the stories and anecdotes I use to tell to my friends, many, surprisingly many, were learnt from this charming and wise book. How to buy a car, when to do it, etc., according to the ethics of times harder. Of course Sir Fred is a great astronomer, learned quantum mechanics from Dirac and is as much famous as a science-fiction writer. So, he wrote one of the best books I read in recent years.