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(meteorobs) This just off the wires: Fred Hoyle dies
Astronomer Hoyle, Who Coined 'Big Bang,' Dies
Updated: Tue, Aug 21 10:24 PM EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer credited with coining
the phrase "Big Bang" to describe academic theory on the creation of the
cosmos, has died, British newspapers reported Wednesday. He was 86.
Hoyle, a Cambridge University academic and science fiction writer, objected
to many conventional cosmological theories and became known as a populariser
of science.
He challenged the belief that a huge explosion 12,000 million years ago
caused the cosmos, ironically giving the theory a name which would last, the
"Big Bang."
Instead of the "Big Bang," Hoyle advocated the "steady state" theory that
the cosmos had no beginning but that new galaxies were formed as others
moved apart.
Although scientific evidence mounted against his stance, Hoyle was acclaimed
for much of his work on stars, galaxies, gravity and atoms.
Born in Yorkshire in northern England to wool merchant parents in 1915,
Hoyle could navigate by the stars by the time he was 10 and often stayed up
all night gazing at the stars through his telescope.
"Hoyle can be credited with having led a revolution in British astro-physics
which at least banished an uncritical acceptance of cosmological orthodoxy,"
the Times said in its obituary.
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