2/4: This file covers Fred Hoyle's academic career and the emergence of major cosmological debate. Hoyle earned his Cambridge PhD in 1939, originally wanting to be a chemist. During WWII, he worked on secret radar projects. Meeting astronomer Walter Baade

The John Batchelor Show

2/4: This file covers Fred Hoyle's academic career and the emergence of major cosmological debate. Hoyle earned his Cambridge PhD in 1939, originally wanting to be a chemist. During WWII, he worked on secret radar projects. Meeting astronomer Walter Baade proved pivotal; Baade proposed that Population 2 stars exploded as supernovae, distributing elements to newer stars. This inspired Hoyle's 1946 seminal paper on stellar nucleosynthesis, explaining how elements from hydrogen to uranium form in stars. Cosmological theories crystallized into competing camps: the Big Bang (from Friedmann and Lemaître's "primeval atom") versus Steady State theory. Einstein had written early steady state concepts but discarded them. Gamow supported the Big Bang, proposing all elements were created in the hot early universe. Early universe age estimates varied wildly between 2-10 billion years, far short of the accepted 13.8 billion years.
Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate, by Paul Halpern