MovieChat Forums > Hawking (2004) Discussion > Fred Hoyle?

Fred Hoyle?

posted 17 years ago by Inkan1969
7 replies | jump to latest

I just watched it in the United States, where it was shown on the Science Channel.

Fred Hoyle is the advocate for Steady State Theory whom Hawking is at odds with. But to me the movie made Professor Hoyle come off as a movie villain. Hoyle is closed minded and stubborn, and he treats Hawking disdainfully ( "No one has observed the background radiation. And WHY is THAT?..." ), much like the loathsome teacher you see in John Hughes movies oppressing the student hero. Now how accurate could this portrayal be? I'm concerned that this portrayal was unfair to Professor Hoyle, who, steady state or not, made very significant research in cosmology and particle physics ( He cowrote a famous 1967 article on the synthesis of elements along with Professors Waggoner and Fowler, among others ).

[–] MrJohn 12 years ago

As much as they'd like you to think otherwise, scientists are very protective of their life's work - Hawking was unravelling Hoyle's claim to history and being a proud man of Northern stock he kicked back against it.

[–] gregmcd101-2 11 years ago

The most accurate description i have heard of Hoyle was ‘a great mass of unwarranted ego’ he was arrogant and stubborn, still clinging to steady state into the 21st century, by which time even the uncontacted tribes of the amazon rejected it. He was a poor scientist, Hawking somewhat better

there's 10 types of folk in the world those that understand binary and those that don't

[–] !!!deleted!!! (50578328) 10 years ago

I can't agree with your assessment of Hoyle. He was a brilliant scientist who for reasons no one can explain, got on the wrong side of several scientific debates. For example, without even examining it, he declared the fossil of archaeopteryx an obvious and poorly done hoax. Of course, it has always been the true jewel of palaeontology!

But his work on stellar nucleosynthesis is science of the absolute highest order.

[–] katentek 9 years ago

Yes but his ego wouldn't let him see the truth about steady state. That doesn't mean he was s bad scientist. He was also a human being though with all the foibles that come with that.

[–] woolwicharsenallondon 8 years ago

I don't think it was his ego. The way he later described Hawking's 'you're wrong, I did the calculations myself' moment at the lecture is not especially aggressive or bitter. The problem was Hoyle's presuppositions - he was in line with most of the scientific establishment at the time in the UK, who rejected the idea of a beginning as religious nonsense. John Maddox, the editor of Nature, is an another example. The film actually covers this fairly well when Hoyle jokes about the earth being a flat earth with heaven just left of the moon. Where the film's portrayal of Hoyle errs is when he says the big bang is 'cartoon science'. When Hoyle used the term in a BBC radio lecture during the 50s it was an illustration rather than a term of disparagement.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (50578328) 8 years ago

The original quote:

"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.”

[–] Neuronhead 9 years ago

The scientific process is adversarial by nature. Hoyle was behaving as every scientist should, by being stubborn. He gives Hawking the same advice when he first asks for Hoyle to be his Phd supervising professor.

I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe