Mountains, megaliths and Yorkshire grit

The world-famous astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle died on August 20, 2001, at the age of 86, and we are now seeing a welcome tide of biographies. There is much to discuss, and this multifaceted man can be approached from many directions.

There is Hoyle the blunt Yorkshire working-class lad, the first-class product of a grammar school meritocracy, battling against the minor public school "aristocracy" of the Cambridge University system. There is Hoyle the astronomical theorist, with his genius for mathematics and physics, struggling against the British astronomical establishment dominated by hands-on optical and radio telescopic observers. There is Hoyle the consummate populariser, who entranced the public with BBC radio talks that led to books such as The Nature of the Universe (1950) and Frontiers of Astronomy (1955), the latter a seminal introduction to the unsolved mysteries and wonders of modern astronomy. They also led to Hoyle's denigration by plodding and tongue-tied fellow academics, many of whom regarded the ability to popularise as a sign of intellectual weakness.

There is also Hoyle the combative cosmologist, a central figure in the 20th century's most intriguing astronomical controversy, in which Martin Ryle and others in favour of a universe started by the Big Bang clap of God's hand slowly overcame those (including Hoyle, Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi) who insisted that the universe had existed for ever, and had always looked the same, and that the observed expansion was being compensated for by a steady trickle of continuous creation. Notwithstanding this controversy, Hoyle was an extremely successful nuclear astrophysicist, this being one of the very few non-controversial areas in his astronomy.

With colleagues Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler and Roger Taylor, he solved the pressing problem of transforming the commonest element in the universe, hydrogen, into helium and then into the more massive elements in astrophysical situations.

Finally, there is Hoyle the science-fiction writer who could write a popular science-fiction novel in three weeks. In so doing, he introduced us to everything from ominous climate change ( The Black Cloud ) to Julie Christie as countless scientists' dream laboratory assistant (in the television series A for Andromeda ).

Hoyle was a truculent, atheistic, anti-establishment figure who ended his life festooned with prizes and honours that could, if he had wanted, have made him a pillar of that establishment. He was not only in the right place (Cambridge), but there at the right time, and doing the right things. He believed that to be a great scientist you should first become a great mathematician. But to be great you had to choose your field carefully, and, just after the Second World War, astronomy was, according to Hoyle, a subject "in which the top researchers are so mediocre you should have no difficulty in making your mark very quickly".

Hoyle often reminds me of Isaac Newton. Both men exhibited an intriguing juxtaposition of positive and negative characteristics. In neither case is the word genius hyperbole, and underlying their undoubted abilities were enormously fertile minds and a huge capacity for hard work. Both Newton and Hoyle were Cambridge University men. Hoyle loved travel, sabbaticals and leave of absence, but at heart he enjoyed being at what he regarded as the premier university in the world, and he saw no reason to make do with second best. Both Hoyle and Newton established a few lifelong academic friendships but also had an unenviable knack of rubbing some colleagues up the wrong way. When Hoyle resigned from Cambridge at the age of 57, there were doubtless as many sighs of relief as there were expressions of regret.

Newton also left Cambridge with few regrets, and in his mid-fifties. But unlike Hoyle, Newton's financial situation improved greatly afterwards.

Both Newton and Hoyle did prizewinning, never-to-be-forgotten science, but they both also spent decades paddling furiously up strange, unproductive scientific and non-scientific backwaters.

All academics will recognise shadows of their own tribulations in Hoyle's life. What is so enjoyable about these three biographies is that they accurately pinpoint the high points and low points. For us more mundane mortals, our career undulations are gentle hills and dales; for Hoyle, they were mountains and chasms.

Take the delicate relationship between a faculty member, his academic colleagues and the university administration. After an illustrious period as a Cambridge undergraduate and postgraduate, going up to Emmanuel College, winning a Half Blue for chess, the Mayhew Prize for applied mathematics and a Goldsmiths' Exhibition, Hoyle continued with a fellowship at St John's and a financially beneficial 1851 Senior Exhibition. Just over a decade after returning from scientific radar work in the Second World War, at the somewhat tender age of 43, he took up one of Cambridge's most senior posts, the Plumian chair of astronomy and experimental philosophy.

Hoyle became a member of the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics (Dampt). But he spent very little time on Silver Street, did not get on with the head of department, became annoyed when the post did not rotate every five years as planned, and spent most of his time at home at 1 Clarkson Close, working in an armchair in front of a large picture window, guarded from unwanted visitors by his wife, Barbara.

To escape from the Dampt, Hoyle decided to set up the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (Iota). Its birth pangs make painful reading, but by October 1966 the foundations of a modern, purpose-built, single-storey edifice graced the woodland to the west of the University Observatory, funded until 1972; and Hoyle was in charge. Hoyle, however, always spread himself very thinly. Even though he now had his own institute, he seemed, even when in Cambridge, rather reluctant to leave his house.

However, he loved the computing facilities and intellectual stimulation of the US and spent many happy months with colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. But when in Cambridge, Hoyle took his eye off the ball. The 1972 refinancing of the Iota rapidly approached and Hoyle hoped that he could easily convince the university to take it over. But this manipulation of a multiple-committee structure should have been nearly a full-time job, and Hoyle was too interested in science to immerse himself effectively in the complicated managerial and financial working of an ancient university. Founding the Iota was fun, but concentrating on its future was too mundane. Cambridge eventually decided to reorganise the whole of astronomy and insisted on a shotgun marriage between astrophysical theory, astronomical observation and telescope instrumentation, under the umbrella of a new Institute of Astronomy, occupying the old Iota building. This was not the Hoyle plan. But he could live with it if he was to be in charge. The university, however, appointed someone else. Hoyle regarded this as a demotion and a serious affront.

There were three things he could now do. He could join the brain drain, which was a political hot potato at the time. Hoyle loved America and emigration was a possibility. There was, however, an insurmountable problem. Neither his wife nor his live-in mother-in-law fancied moving. The second option was to stick it out at Cambridge for the eight years until retirement. For most academics, this would not have been a great hardship.

Hoyle was still full of ideas; his science was still mainstream; he had the Plumian chair, a knighthood, a fellowship of the Royal Society, the presidency of the Royal Astronomical Society and a lovely home. Hoyle, however, chose plan three. As we say in Yorkshire, "he took his bat in". He resigned, turned his back on his alma mater and moved to his beloved Lake District.

I greatly enjoyed reading these three books. The first two are cradle-to-grave biographies. Simon Mitton is a Cambridge man who knew Hoyle for nearly 30 years and was one of his research fellows at the Iota. Jane Gregory wrote her 1998 University of London PhD thesis on "Fred Hoyle and the Popularisation of Cosmology", and she is now a senior lecturer at University College London.

Both these books are replete with large reference sections, copious notes concerning archival material, letters, publications and books, and telling photographs of Hoyle and family and friends. Both are very well written, and in neither is there any hint of pace flagging. Mitton and Gregory have clearly read extremely widely, have talked to many of Hoyle's old colleagues, and have exhibited a detailed understanding of 20th-century astrophysics and the influential role in it played by Hoyle. Mitton and Gregory are "fans", their pages shining with respect and admiration. Both hint that others might have different views. It seemed easier, however, to concentrate on the cheerful, stocky, Pickwickian, open-hearted characteristics of our West Riding hero, rather than the unworldly, childlike, naive aspects and his frequent lack of guarded sophistication.

There are perhaps only two relatively minor distinguishing features. Mitton catches the essence of Hoyle the lonely hill-walker. Here was a man who really appreciated the challenges of Scotland's 284 Munro Mountains after the bustling flatness of Cambridgeshire. And, where Mitton paints a harrowing picture of the 82-year-old astronomer being mugged in Shipley Glen, while rambling near his sister's Yorkshire house, Gregory dismisses the episode as a collapse in the Lake District.

I am embarrassed by not being able to choose between these two excellent books. Luckily, they are so reasonably priced that I can happily recommend that you get both of them. Read one now and save the other for later enjoyment.

The third book, by Chandra Wickramasinghe, focuses on one of the final chapters of Hoyle's academic life. I was hoping for an insider's story of Hoyle's years in retirement. Wickramasinghe started his Cambridge PhD in 1960, with Hoyle as his supervisor. He then joined the Iota, leaving in 1972 to become a professor at Cardiff University. Wickramasinghe and Hoyle studied interstellar dust, starting with the conventional mineral hypothesis. Here dust in low-density extremely cold interstellar clouds consisted of small silicate grains. But the infrared spectrum of the light reflected from the dust particles was unusual. Soon they were considering the possibility that the dust might be being coated with inorganic ices.

They then went on to suggest that more exotic organic polymers were involved. Not satisfied with coal-tars such as polyoxymethylene, their next steps embraced bacteria, panspermia and viruses. Benign comets were now reinvested with their medieval role as harbingers of pestilence and death.

From his retreat near Ullswater, Hoyle wrestled with the epidemiological statistics of influenza outbreaks and became convinced that many diseases had a cosmic cause.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe wrote more than 100 research papers and 17 books, among them the exotically titled Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe (1978) and Astronomical Origins of Life: Steps towards Panspermia (2000). The pair even became diverted from astrobiology to investigate a transitional evolutionary form. Their book Archaeopteryx , The Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery (1986) caused outrage among palaeontologists. One reviewer (Tom Kemp in Nature ) pointed to "staggering ignorance" and "a gargantuan conceit that they are clever enough to solve other people's problems for them when they do not even begin to recognise the nature and complexity of those problems".

Unfortunately, A Journey with Fred Hoyle concentrates far too much on what Hoyle and Wickramasinghe did and too little on why they did it and how they did it. I would have liked to have learnt how the collaboration worked, how the ideas were generated, if there was a dominant partner, who decided what to do next, whether there were any major disagreements and how they dealt with anonymous referees' comments. (They were one of Hoyle's bugbears, and his views on the refereeing system employed by the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society were trenchant, to say the least.) All three books under review underline the fact that Hoyle was an extraordinary person. That he was extremely talented and multifaceted is indisputable. His position as one of the most famous astronomers of the past century is secure. But I would have liked to have learnt much more about Hoyle's underlying motivation. When he left Cambridge at the age of 57 and "retired"to the Lake District, did he keep working and publishing because he needed the money, or could he just not stop himself? One gleans a few clues from some of the extensive quotations given by Gregory. Hoyle once mentioned that one of his great heroes was Ludwig van Beethoven. He admired the composer's driving energy, and he empathised with one of Beethoven's famous quotations: "I don't know whether I've achieved very much, but at least I can say that I have never had an idea I didn't exploit." This underlines Hoyle's refreshing modesty and his energy, but it also highlights his fascination for what others often term "hit-and-run" topics.

Hoyle will always be remembered for his outstanding scientific successes, but as with many scientists, there were failures. Some ideas he tackled would have been far better left alone. Some theories that he espoused he grimly held on to for far too long. There is a very telling quotation about this from Burbidge in Gregory's book. Hoyle was at Caltech having lunch.

Maarten Schmidt, Willy Fowler and Richard Feynman were there. Hoyle remarked "I reckon we're doing well if we bat .500"; by this meaning that he was perfectly satisfied with being right half the time. His colleagues were aghast. They intimated that they would be ashamed to get one out of two things wrong. But Fred did so much in his life that, looking at the other side of the coin, getting one out of every two things right was a great, momentous and unforgettable achievement. He was not ashamed of his mistakes. And we love him for it.

David Hughes is professor of astronomy, Sheffield University.