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Fred Hoyle Biography

Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was a British astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth. He also wrote science fiction novels, short stories and radio plays, and co-authored twelve books with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle.

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Fred Hoyle Quotes

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.

Becomes, History, Ideas, Loose, Powerful, Taken

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

Curious, Doe, Eschew, Religion, Scientist, Scientists

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

Away, Drive, Funny, Inspirational, Remote, Space

Science is prediction, not explanation.

Explanation, Prediction, Predictions, Science

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

Common, Common Sense, If There Is A God, Interpretation, Science, Sense

The man who voyages strange seas must of necessity be a little unsure of himself. It is the man with the flashy air of knowing everything, who is always with it, that we should beware of.

Air, Journey, Man, Men, Seas, Strange

He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.

Among, Conformity, Dog, Dogs, Lives, Pant

. . . the establishment defends itself by complicating everything to the point of incomprehensibility.

Complicating, Defends, Establishment, Everything, Incomprehensibility

One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties.

Bang, Idea, Ideas, Life, Science, Seemed

Well, we now have such a photograph. . . Has any new idea been let loose? It certainly has. You will have noticed how suddenly everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment. . . It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.

Ideas, Loose, Men, Seriously, Space, Step

It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.

Example, Learn, Learning, Mistake, Mistakes, True

I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible.

Data, Logic, Rejecting, See, Statistics

Earlier theories. . . were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression. ]

Based, Created, Expression, Hypothesis, Past, Science

The main efforts of investigators have been in papering over contradictions in the big bang theory, to build up an idea which has become ever more complex and cumbersome.

Bangs, Contradictions, Effort, Efforts, Ideas, Theory

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.

Boeing 747, Junk, Material, Origin Of Life, Processes

On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much less the palatable of the two. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms. . . . On philosophical grounds too I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation.

Big, Idea, Ideas, Observation, Philosophical, Two

Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way.

Age, Learnt, Three, Twelve

The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it (1040,000). . . . It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.

Evolution, Formation, Life, Numbers, Theory Of Evolution, Whole

I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee.

Boiling, Delivered, Memories, Port, Sorry, Wrath

Imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik's cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have a chance of arriving by random shuffling, of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.

1050, Blind, Cells, Cube, Order, Trying

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