Hoyle's work on stellar nucleosynthesis culminated in a 1957 paper, written with Fowler and Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, that remains a milestone in modern astrophysics.

Shortly thereafter, the physicist William Fowler performed experiments that confirmed Hoyle's prediction. In 1953 Hoyle's investigations of how stars generate heavy elements led him to predict the existence of a previously unknown state of the isotope carbon 12. Hoyle became a lecturer at Cambridge himself in 1945, and he swiftly moved to the forefront of astronomy, showing how nuclear physics could illuminate such celestial phenomena as white dwarfs, red giants, supernovae and the brilliant radio sources that came to be called quasars. Their partnership worked well, Hoyle once said, since he didn't want a mentor and Dirac didn't want to be one. Born in 1915, Hoyle studied at the University of Cambridge under physicist and Nobel laureate Paul Dirac. – John HorganĪ selective reading of Fred Hoyle's resume might make him appear to be the quintessential scientific insider. I interviewed Hoyle in 1992 at his home in England.

Below is an edited version of a portrait of Fred Hoyle, the iconoclastic British astrophysicist, who collaborated with Burbidge, from my 1996 book The End of Science. They might also provide a distraction from coronavirus coverage. I’m posting profiles of some of these characters in the hope that readers will find them interesting and relevant to current scientific controversies. The recent deaths of Freeman Dyson, Philip Anderson and Margaret Burbidge have stirred up memories of other giants of physics.

The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle