Buch, Englisch, 418 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 790 g
Buch, Englisch, 418 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 790 g
ISBN: 978-0-19-850791-8
Verlag: OUP Oxford
Fred Hoyle was one of the most widely acclaimed and colourful scientists of the twentieth century, a down-to-earth Yorkshireman who combined a brilliant scientific mind with a relish for communication and controversy.
Best known for his steady-state theory of cosmology, he described a universe with both an infinite past and an infinite future. He coined the phrase 'big bang' to describe the main competing theory, and sustained a long-running, sometimes ill-tempered, and typically public debate with his scientific rivals. He showed how the elements are formed by nuclear reactions inside stars, and explained how we are therefore all formed from stardust. He also claimed that diseases fall from the sky, attacked Darwinism, and branded the famous fossil of the feathered Archaeopteryx a fake.
Throughout his career, Hoyle played a major role in the popularization of science. Through his radio broadcasts and his highly successful science fiction novels he became a household name, though his outspokenness and support for increasingly outlandish causes later in life at times antagonized the scientific community.
Jane Gregory builds up a vivid picture of Hoyle's role in the ideas, the organization, and the popularization of astronomy in post-war Britain, and provides a fascinating examination of the relationship between a maverick scientist, the scientific establishment, and the public. Through the life of Hoyle, this book chronicles the triumphs, jealousies, rewards, and feuds of a rapidly developing scientific field, in a narrative animated by a cast of colourful astronomers, keeping secrets, losing their tempers, and building their careers here on Earth while contemplating the nature of the stars.
Zielgruppe
General readers with an interest in Fred Hoyle, cosmology, science in general, especially the popularization of science, and the human side of scientific research.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Naturwissenschaften Astronomie Astronomie: Allgemeines
- Naturwissenschaften Physik Angewandte Physik Astrophysik
- Naturwissenschaften Astronomie Galaxien und Sterne
- Naturwissenschaften Astronomie Astronomie: Sachbuch
- Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften
- Naturwissenschaften Astronomie Astrophysik
Weitere Infos & Material
- 1: Coming to light
- 2: Hut No. 2
- 3: Into the limelight
- 4: New world
- 5: Under fire
- 6: New genesis
- 7: The end of the endless cosmos
- 8: Fighting for space
- 9: Storm clouds
- 10: 'Dear Mr Hogg'
- 11: His institute
- 12: The end of the beginning
- 13: The Astronomer Hoyle
- 14: The beginning of the end
- 15: Freelance scientist
- 16: Apocalyptic visions
- 17: Anti-Darwin
- 18: A new cosmology
