Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science

Author Simon Mitton is himself an astrophysicist, educated at Oxford where Fred Hoyle worked for so many years. This gives him the ability to write about Fred Hoyle with a level of insight and scientific judgement that a lay author would not be able to bring. Mitton traces Hoyle's life in detail, which is what you would expect from any good biography. But here we also learn about not only the things that made Fred Hoyle famous, like the Steady State theory, his science fiction work such as "The Black Cloud," Julie Christie (!), but also his greatest contributions to physics--stellar processes and evolution--unknown to most people (certainly to me). Hoyle was virtually an idea machine, churning out an amazing number of ideas during his life--some of them decidedly crackpot, but many of them utterly brilliant. We're also treated to a detailed view of the Oxford bureaucracy, and how Fred brought it to at least some kind of truce--for a while. This is a remarkably detailed, fascinating view of an unique man, presenting Hoyle as whole person, brilliant yet flawed. Most of all, though, it is a compelling read. When I finished the book I was actually sad that the experience was over.

this is an excellent book about a fascinating scientist, fred hoyle. it is well written and almost anyone with a smattering of knowledge of physics and astronomy can follow and learn from this biography. mitton lays out hoyle's ideas clearly and shows how they differ from other theories and how they advanced science. also, unerlying it all is a theme that it is more than ok to think beyond the accepted knowledge, and that is how science develops. hoyle may have been wrong on some subjects but he also developed much of what is now basic astrophysics. while hoyle is often referred to as wrong about the big bang et al, time may well show that he was right after all. big bang leads down some dead ends, whereas recent discoveries and theories algin more with hoyle's steady state theory. newton and others thought so too. a good read and a good buy. dgs

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.

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.

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)