Fred Hoyle

Sir Fred Hoyle was a brilliant and fiercely provocative English astronomer and mathematician who transformed our understanding of how the elements in our bodies were forged in the stars. Holding the Plumian Professorship at Cambridge and founding the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, Hoyle was renowned for his bold cosmological theories and best-selling science fiction novels such as The Black Cloud.

In 1946 and 1954, followed by the historic 1957 'B²FH' paper with Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge, and William Fowler, Hoyle solved the mystery of cosmic chemistry: he proved that all elements heavier than helium were forged through nuclear fusion inside dying stars and dispersed into space via supernovae. He predicted the precise excited nuclear resonance state of carbon-12 (the 'Hoyle state'), without which life could not exist. An advocate of the Steady State model, Hoyle ironically coined the phrase 'Big Bang' during a 1949 BBC radio broadcast to characterize the expanding universe hypothesis he opposed, unwittingly giving it its enduring name.