Difference between revisions of "Fred Hoyle"

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(I think it's better to discuss his accomplishments before discussing why he didn't win a Nobel for them, but you're the boss.)
(No Nobel Prize: Move my general discussion out to the other page.)
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In 1983 the [[Nobel Prize]] committee insulted Hoyle by passing him over and giving the award to underlings for his work.  "For ... one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of modern physics, he was ignored by the Nobel Prize committee which chose to reward others who had done lesser work in this field. Thus, the scientific establishment, which claims to seek truth dispassionately, treated one of its finest proponents with contempt."<ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jul/24/biography.features1, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize</ref>
 
In 1983 the [[Nobel Prize]] committee insulted Hoyle by passing him over and giving the award to underlings for his work.  "For ... one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of modern physics, he was ignored by the Nobel Prize committee which chose to reward others who had done lesser work in this field. Thus, the scientific establishment, which claims to seek truth dispassionately, treated one of its finest proponents with contempt."<ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jul/24/biography.features1, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize</ref>
  
The selection of Nobel Prize winners is a complex and mysterious subject, and not without occasional controversy.  There have been a number of cases of people not being awarded a Nobel in decisions that many observers strongly disagreed with.  Some of the better-known examples are Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Lise Meitner, Fred Hoyle, Rosalind Franklin, and [[Robert Dicke]].  The first two of these were asserted to be plain sexism.  Fred Hoyle probably lost out at least in part, because several years earlier he had loudly condemned the exclusion of [[Jocelyn Bell Burnell]] from the 1974 Physics Prize<ref>http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize</ref>. Roslind Franklin lost out because she died before she could receive the award.  There is a hard-and-fast rule that the recipient must be living.  (Peter Higgs waited nearly 50 years for the Higgs boson to be confirmed, finally winning his Nobel at age 84.)
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Fred Hoyle probably lost out, at least in part, because several years earlier he had loudly condemned the exclusion of [[Jocelyn Bell Burnell]] from the 1974 Physics Prize<ref>http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize</ref>.
  
Achievements for which a Nobel is awarded must also stand the test of time.  The Nobel committee does not like to find that something they awarded a prize for turned out to be wrong.  So there is often a long delay, as in Peter Higgs' case.
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See [http://www.conservapedia.com/Nobel_Prize#Criteria the discussion of Nobel Prize criteria] for further discussion of this topic.
 
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The Hoyle's "steady state creation" theory turned out to be wrong.  But he, like Robert Dicke, made other groundbreaking contributions in cosmology, at a time when cosmology was not yet a respectable field of study.
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So it's really hard to say.
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In 1985 (two years later) Hoyle was part of a group that exposed the [[Archaeopteryx]] - then a favorite of promoters of [[evolution]] - as a fraud<ref>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/forgery.html</ref>.
 
In 1985 (two years later) Hoyle was part of a group that exposed the [[Archaeopteryx]] - then a favorite of promoters of [[evolution]] - as a fraud<ref>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/forgery.html</ref>.

Revision as of 16:29, May 17, 2015

Sir Frederick "Fred" Hoyle (1915-2001), considered the greatest British physicist of the 20th century, was noted for his rejection of naturalistic theories of how the universe came into being.[1] (See Intelligent design.) Nobel Prize winner William Alfred Fowler wrote: "Fred Hoyle was the second great influence in my life. The grand concept of nucleosynthesis in stars was first definitely established by Hoyle in 1946."[2] During a radio lecture, he coined the term "big bang" to ridicule the theory (which he disbelieved[3]) that the universe began from an explosion. Hoyle developed the steady state theory of cosmology.

Hoyle was best known for his seminal contributions to the theory of the structure of stars and on the origin of the chemical elements in stars. He was a joint proponent of the steady state model of the universe, which claims, in contradiction to the Biblical creation account, that the universe had no beginning.

No Nobel Prize

In 1983 the Nobel Prize committee insulted Hoyle by passing him over and giving the award to underlings for his work. "For ... one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of modern physics, he was ignored by the Nobel Prize committee which chose to reward others who had done lesser work in this field. Thus, the scientific establishment, which claims to seek truth dispassionately, treated one of its finest proponents with contempt."[4]

Fred Hoyle probably lost out, at least in part, because several years earlier he had loudly condemned the exclusion of Jocelyn Bell Burnell from the 1974 Physics Prize[5].

See the discussion of Nobel Prize criteria for further discussion of this topic.

In 1985 (two years later) Hoyle was part of a group that exposed the Archaeopteryx - then a favorite of promoters of evolution - as a fraud[6].

Stellar nucleosynthesis

By 1946 Hoyle had formulated the original and still generally accepted idea that the elements are generated in evolving stars and injected into the interstellar medium by supernova explosions. In 1957 he collaborated with William Alfred Fowler, Margaret Burbidge and Geoffrey Burbidge on an epoch-making paper on the nucleosynthesis of elements in stars.[7]

Origin of life

Hoyle, a life-long atheist, was positively anti-theistic[8]; instead of accepting a Divine hand in things, he proposed a deus ex machina alien intervention[9] more in keeping with one of his many science fiction novels [10] than with faith and logic.

"The likelihood (probability) of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence." Sir Fredrick Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 148. [11]

References

  1. He supported the anthropic principle, holding that there is a design in creation: the universe was designed in such a way as to produce life. [1]
  2. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hoyle.htm
  3. Hoyle held out against Big Bang theory, even post-1965, when the discovery of a microwave background in the universe led most cosmologists to favor it. Physics Today obituary
  4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jul/24/biography.features1, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize
  5. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize
  6. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/forgery.html
  7. http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0275%2FHoyle
  8. see "Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science (Simon Mitton, Joseph Henry Press, 2005) and "How is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist;s Life" (Fred Hoyle, University Science, 1994)
  9. see "Evolution from Space: a Theory of Cosmic Creationism (Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Simon and Schuster, 1984)
  10. http://www.hoyle.org.uk/FH/Fiction.html
  11. http://www.discoveryevent.com/quotes1.htm

External links