The birth centenary of the noted British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle was celebrated on Friday at the Royal Astronomical Society with a one-day meeting of talks describing Sir Fred’s many contributions to 20th century physics. While he is chiefly remembered in some quarters as the physicist who was ‘wrong on the big bang’, Sir Fred in fact made a number of seminal contributions to modern physics in several fields. Indeed, it was a treat to witness former collaborators and students recall his contribution to stellar evolution, stellar nucleosynthesis, astrobiology and cosmology, to name but a few.
I hadn’t been to the RAS before although I was elected a Fellow a few years ago, and I was stunned by its fantastic location in central London. It is housed in the famous Burlington House on Piccadilly, sharing the premises and courtyard with the Linnean Society, the Geological Society and the Royal Academy of Arts, a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus. As luck would have it, the Royal Academy are currently hosting a show of the work of the Chinese artist Weiwei, and his striking ‘Tree Sculpture’ filled the Burlington courtyard.

Burlington house on Piccadilly, housing five learned London societies, including the Royal Academy of Arts

Weiwei’s exhibit ‘Tree Sculpture’ in the Burlington courtyard. The RAS is located on the west wing of the courtyard.
The meeting opened with an introduction by Lord Martin Rees, who gave a comprehensive overview of Sir Fred’s works in a short, a ten-minute talk. This was followed by a description of Hoyle’s contribution to accretion physics by Professor Andrew Fabian of the Institute for Astronomy (IOA) in Cambridge, and talks on Hoyle’s work on nucleosynthesis by Professor Lynden-Bell (IOA) and Professor Malcolm Longair, Director of the Cavendish laboratory.
Professor Jayant Narlikar of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (Pune, India) then gave the talk ‘Fred’s theories and ideas about gravity’. This was a rare treat – as a long term collaborator, Jayant made several important contributions to the development of Hoyle’s steady-state model of the universe (including the development of a new version of the model based on the principle of least action, and the development of the later ‘quasi-steady-state’ model), so it was most interesting to hear his take on the genesis of the steady-state cosmologies of Hoyle and Bondi and Gold.

Hoyle and Narlikar in 1966
Another treat was a talk by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the University of Buckingham, ‘Fred Hoyle and the foundation of astrobiology’. This presented interesting insights into Chandra’s long collaboration with Sir Fred, from their early work on interstellar dust to their famous hypothesis that life on earth was seeded by comets. The latter work essentially founded the modern field of astrobiology, although they are not always credited for this.
Jayant’s talk was followed by a talk on Hoyle’s cosmology by Professor John Barrow of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. John gave a superb overview of Hoyle’s steady-state model of the universe, and of the battle royale between Hoyle’s theory group and Martin Ryle’s astronomy group at Cambridge during the 1950s. Most members of the audience were familiar with this story, but John brought out many points that are not well known – not least that the widespread skepticism concerning Hoyle’s hypothesis of the continuous creation of matter was something of a moot point. As demonstrated by Bill McCrea in 1951, a viable steady-state model can be constructed without this assumption. John also reminded the audience that today’s models of cosmic inflation are effectively steady-state cosmologies, and, if the eternal inflationary scenario is right, it is possible that the observed universe is a locally evolving patch in a global ensemble that is in a steady state!

Eternal inflation could give rise to evolving universes embedded in a global steady-state ensemble
I touched on both these points in my own talk ‘Steady-state cosmologies in context‘, although my main aim was to remind the audience that Hoyle’s steady-state model was a reasonable hypothesis at the time – and that the notion of a steady-state universe surfaced in cosmology on many occasions, from Arrhenius to Nernst, from Holmes to MacMillan. Further, not many people know that soon after the emergence of the first evidence for an expanding universe, several physicists considered the possibility of an expanding universe that remains in a steady state due to a continuous replenishment of matter, from Tolman to Einstein, from Schroedinger to Mimura. That said, my main focus was to discuss Einstein’s abandoned attempt at a steady-state model , an unpublished work discovered 2 years ago. (You can find more on Einstein’s attempt at a steady=state model here and here).
Between the two talks on Sir Fred’s cosmology, Nicola Hoyle gave a fascinating description of her personal recollections of her grandfather. It included many intriguing photos and pieces of information I hadn’t seen before. The meeting ended with a talk by Professor John Faulkner of the University of California at Santa Cruz on Sir Fred’s contribution to our understanding of stellar structure and evolution, after which we all trooped off to the beautiful library of Geological Society on the other side of the square for coffee.
All in all, a superb conference in memory of a superb physicist. The meeting was organized by Simon Mitton of Cambridge University. You can find the programme here and slides for my own talk on the ‘Seminars’ page of this blog.
After the meeting, speakers were treated to dinner at the famous RAS Dining Club, and I rolled back to my hotel through the gardens of Buckingham Palace. On Saturday, I took a hop-on hop-off open bus tour of London and it was a great success. In particular, I caught a young string orchestra rehearsing Correlli and Vivaldi concerti in St Martin in the Fields, and a superbly talented string quartet playing Brahms’s Hungarian Dances in Covent Garden, not to mention a relaxing stroll along the Embankment in the afternoon sun. I’d forgotten what London can be like on a Saturday afternoon, must visit the RAS more often!

The best way to see London
Update
There is a detailed summary of the meeting in this month’s issue of Astronomy and Geophysics
4 responses to “Switzerland”