Editing Fred Hoyle (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Hoyle was born near Bingley in [[Gilstead]], [[West Riding of Yorkshire]], England.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hoyle.org.uk/FH/History.html|title=Sir Fred Hoyle|publisher=Hoyle.org.uk|access-date=15 September 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110917012712/http://www.hoyle.org.uk/FH/History.html|archive-date=17 September 2011}}</ref> His father Ben Hoyle was a violinist and worked in the [[wool]] trade in [[Bradford]], and served as a machine gunner in the [[World War I|First World War]].<ref name="SJC">{{cite web|url=https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle/exhibition/family|title= Hoyle's Youth|publisher=St. John's College University of Cambridge}}</ref> His mother, Mabel Pickard, had studied music at the [[Royal College of Music]] in London and later worked as a cinema pianist.<ref name="SJC"/> Hoyle was educated at [[Bingley Grammar School]] and read [[mathematics]] at [[Emmanuel College, Cambridge]].<ref>{{cite ODNB|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/76123|title=Oxford DNB article: Hoyle, Sir Fred|publisher=[[Dictionary of National Biography]]|last=Moore|first=Patrick|author-link=Patrick Moore|access-date=10 August 2009|url-access=subscription|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/76123|year=2004}}</ref> As a youth, he sang in the choir at the local Anglican church.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8038257.sir-fred-was-kindest-of-men-says-sister/|title=Sir Fred was kindest of men, says sister|work=Bradford Telegraph and Argus|accessdate=4 May 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bingley.church/history-of-the-parish/|title=History of the Parish|date=2 February 2017|accessdate=4 May 2022|archive-date=24 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220524004158/http://www.bingley.church/history-of-the-parish/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 1936, Hoyle shared the [[Mayhew Prize]] with [[George Stanley Rushbrooke]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hoyle.html |title=Hoyle biography<!-- Bot generated title --> |access-date=2008-07-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060924123820/http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hoyle.html |archive-date=2006-09-24 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Career===
In late 1940, Hoyle left Cambridge to go to [[Portsmouth]] to work for the [[British Admiralty|Admiralty]] on [[radar]] research, for example devising a method to get the altitude of incoming aeroplanes. He was also put in charge of countermeasures against the radar-guided guns found on the [[German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee|''Graf Spee'']] after its scuttling in the [[Río de la Plata|River Plate]].<ref>Mitton, Simon ''Fred Hoyle, a Life in Science'', Cambridge University Press (2011).</ref> Britain's radar project was a large-scale operation, and was probably the inspiration for the large British project in Hoyle's novel ''[[The Black Cloud]]''. Two colleagues in this war work were [[Hermann Bondi]] and [[Thomas Gold]], and the three had many discussions on cosmology. The radar work involved several trips to North America, where he took the opportunity to visit astronomers. On one trip to the US, he learned about supernovae at [[Caltech]] and [[Mount Palomar]] and, in Canada, the nuclear physics of plutonium implosion and explosion, noticed some similarity between the two and started thinking about [[supernova nucleosynthesis]]. He had an intuition at the time "I will make a name for myself if this works out" (he published his prescient and groundbreaking paper in 1954). He also formed a group at Cambridge exploring [[stellar nucleosynthesis]] in ordinary stars and was bothered by the paucity of stellar carbon production in existing models. He noticed that one existing process would be made a billion times more productive if the [[carbon-12]] nucleus had a resonance at 7.7 MeV, but nuclear physicists at the time omitted such an observed value. On another trip, he visited the nuclear physics group at Caltech, spent a few months of sabbatical there and persuaded them against their scepticism to find the [[Carbon-12#Hoyle state|Hoyle state]] in carbon-12, from which a full theory of stellar [[nucleosynthesis]] was developed, co-authored by Hoyle and members of the Caltech group.<ref>Gregory, Jane ''Fred Hoyle's Universe'', World Scientific Pub, 2003</ref>

[[File:Fred Hoyle BGS Plaque.jpg|thumb|left|upright|A [[blue plaque]] at Bingley Grammar School commemorating Hoyle]]
In 1945, after the war ended, Hoyle returned to Cambridge University as a lecturer at [[St John's College, Cambridge]] (where he had been a Fellow since 1939).<ref name="Fred Hoyle Project">[https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle Fred Hoyle Project], St John's College, Cambridge</ref> Hoyle's Cambridge years, 1945–1973, saw him rise to the top of world astrophysics theory, on the basis of a startling originality of ideas covering a wide range of topics. In 1958, Hoyle was appointed  [[Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy]] in Cambridge University. In 1967, he became the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (subsequently renamed the [[Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge]]), where his innovative leadership quickly led to this institution becoming one of the premier groups in the world for theoretical astrophysics. In 1971, he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the [[Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland]]. He chose the subject "Astronomical Instruments and their Construction".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iesis.org/macmillan.html|title=Hugh Miller Macmillan|work=Macmillan Memorial Lectures|publisher=[[Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181004102303/http://www.iesis.org/macmillan.html|archive-date=4 October 2018|access-date=29 January 2019}}</ref> Hoyle was knighted in 1972.

Although the occupant of two distinguished offices, by 1972 Hoyle had become unhappy with his life in Cambridge. A dispute over election to a professorial chair led to Hoyle resigning as Plumian professor in 1972. The following year he also resigned the directorship of the institute. Explaining his actions, he later wrote: "I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win. The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prevent one ever establishing a directed policy - key decisions can be upset by ill-informed and politically motivated committees. To be effective in this system one must for ever be watching one's colleagues, almost like a Robespierre spy system. If one does so, then of course little time is left for any real science."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/aug/23/guardianobituaries.spaceexploration|title=Obituary - Sir Fred Hoyle|first=Bernard |last=Lovell|date=23 August 2001|website=The Guardian|access-date=25 March 2024}}</ref>

After leaving Cambridge, Hoyle wrote several popular science and science fiction books, as well as presenting lectures around the world, partly to provide a means of support. Hoyle was still a member of the joint policy committee (since 1967), during the planning stage for the 150-inch [[Anglo-Australian Telescope]] at [[Siding Spring Observatory]] in New South Wales. He became chairman of the Anglo-Australian Telescope board in 1973, and presided at its inauguration in 1974 by [[Charles III of the United Kingdom|Charles, Prince of Wales]].

===Decline and death===
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After his resignation from Cambridge, Hoyle moved to the [[Lake District]] and occupied his time with treks across the moors, writing books, visiting research centres around the world, and working on science ideas (that have been largely rejected). On 24 November 1997, while hiking across moorlands in west Yorkshire, near his childhood home in Gilstead, Hoyle fell into a steep ravine called [[Shipley Glen]]. He was located about 12 hours later by a party using search dogs. He was hospitalised for two months with a broken shoulder bone, and [[pneumonia]] and kidney problems, both resulting from hypothermia. Thereafter he entered a marked decline, suffering from memory and mental agility problems. In 2001, he suffered a series of strokes and died in [[Bournemouth]] on 20 August of that year.