Sir Fred HoyleBorn 24 Jun 1915; died 20 Aug 2001 at age 86. English astronomer and mathematician who is best known as the foremost proponent and defender of the steady-state theory of the universe. This theory holds both that the universe is expanding and that matter is being continuously created to keep the mean density of matter in space constant. He became Britain's best-known astronomer in 1950 with his broadcast lectures on The Nature of the Universe, and he recalled derisively coining the term “Big Bang” in the last of those talks. Although over time, belief in a “steady state” universe as Hoyle had proposed was shared by fewer and fewer scientists because of new discoveries, Hoyle never accepted the now most popular “Big Bang” theory for the origin of the universe. |
