Editing Fred Hoyle (section)

===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]].