Gateway Essentials: Sir Fred Hoyle

Born in 1915 in Yorkshire, Sir Fred Hoyle was one of Britian’s most renowned astronomers, noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis (for which many think he ought to have won the Nobel Prize for Physics) and his often controversial stances on other scientific matters – in particular his rejection of the Big Bang Theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio. He has authored hundreds of technical articles, as well as textbooks, popular accounts of science and two autobiographies. In addition to his work as an astronomer, Hoyle was a writer of science fiction, including a number of books co-written with his son Geoffrey Hoyle. Hoyle spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and served as its director for a number of years. He was knighted in 1972 and died in Bournemouth, England, after a series of strokes.

If you’re looking for a place to start with Fred Hoyle’s fiction, we recommend his Gateway Essentials: a966’s  timeslip novel October the First is Too Late or storu collection Element 79 (1967).

You can find more of Fred Hoyle’s work via his Author page on the Gateway website, and read about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.