A GENIUS is someone who has two good ideas, said the mathematician and
broadcaster Jacob Bronowski. By that definition, Fred Hoyle, who died last week
aged 86, qualified with ease.
He figured out where all the atoms in our bodies came from, an idea which
many thought should have earned him at least a share of the 1983 Nobel Prize for
Physics. And he devised the steady state theory of the Universe, in which matter
is continuously created as the Universe expands. It turned out to be
wrong鈥攁t least in its original incarnation鈥攂ut the crucial point is
that it made predictions which were refutable by observation. This instantly
converted cosmology from theology into the arena of testable science. (It is an
ironic aside that Hoyle also coined the term 鈥渂ig bang鈥� for the main competing
cosmological picture, which he never accepted.)
Hoyle was undoubtedly one of the most important physicists of the post-war
era. There is not a field of modern astrophysics that he did not have a hand in
starting. Yet he was also one of the most misunderstood and derided of
scientists.
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In his early years, Hoyle was certainly brash, challenging his colleagues
with a bluntness they weren鈥檛 used to. He also committed the cardinal academic
sin of being popular鈥攎istakenly equated with not being serious. In the
1950s, Hoyle became a best-selling author of popular science books, and in the
1960s he even co-wrote a TV drama series, A for Andromeda. But the main
reason for Hoyle鈥檚 frosty reception in academia was his scattergun way of doing
science. He believed that if he fired off enough ideas, at least some would hit
the target. He didn鈥檛 expect he鈥檇 be right every time. But others did鈥攁nd
they crucified him when he was wrong.
Hoyle鈥檚 ideas were always imaginative and unorthodox. When reacting to them,
scientists often forget that many of his stranger ideas have since become the
orthodoxy. His notion that molecular hydrogen should be common in space was
considered so ridiculous when he announced it in 1940 that fellow scientists
froze him out. The same thing happened in the 1970s when, with Chandra
Wickramasinghe, he promoted the idea that biomolecules would be found in space.
As we now know, not only is molecular hydrogen abundant in outer space, so too
are many complex organic molecules, including at least one amino acid.
Hoyle realised early in his career that important progress in science
involves thinking 鈥渙utside the box鈥�. This is guaranteed to annoy those in the
mainstream, and Hoyle resigned himself to paying the price. Of course, not all
maverick thinkers move science forward, but Hoyle did. His death is a reminder
of the importance of a constant stream of ideas鈥攔ight or wrong. Without
it, progress would be utterly impossible.
