Fred Hoyle, a life in science

My biography of the astronomer Fred Hoyle, a life in science, first published in 2005, is being re-issued in February 2011, in paperback, published worldwide by Cambridge University Press. There is an amazon.co.uk page for this book and there are two customer reviews

In this blog I will now run extracts from the book.

The extract here is from the first chapter:
On 19 August 1972, Fred Hoyle sat in his office at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge for the last time. His summer had been busy. A record number of academic visitors had come to the Institute to benefit from summer conferences, collaborations, lectures and discussions. He had fretted to make sure the Institute would be financed securely for the next five years. Just three weeks earlier, the Institute of Astronomy had been born through a merger of two astronomy departments, after the university had decided to join the historic Observatories established in 1823 with the pioneering Institute of Theoretical Astronomy founded by Hoyle in 1965. Hoyle had been the head of Theoretical Astronomy for seven years, but now he had a new boss, because the university had not chosen him as the Director of the combined Institute.
For decades Hoyle had been the best-known astrophysicist in Britain. His output of technical papers was prodigious. But he never confined himself to the ivory towers of academia. A gifted populariser, he could make the most profound intellectual puzzles into entertaining radio talks and lucid television programmes. Fred Hoyle’s broadcasts and books influenced many of us who were drawn into astronomy. Most years he wrote a book, sometimes two. The sweep of his accomplishment as a writer covered a spectrum from popular books to technical monographs. Imaginative ideas that were too speculative for journal papers and serious books were cleverly developed to be aired in the guise of science fiction.
Despite his fame and standing, matters in Cambridge had somehow unravelled in the past year so that, as Hoyle put it, ‘now I really did want to be done with it’.
Even when the tea drinkers had drifted back to their offices, Hoyle still felt unable to make a break for it, not wishing to endure the embarrassment of further handshakes, eye contact or best wishes. By early evening the Institute building was finally empty. The time to depart had come. He would head straight for the main door and be done with the Institute for ever. He took a last look round the office and, as an afterthought, picked up the inky blotter on the desk as a memento. He seldom used ballpoint pens, always choosing to write confidently with a fountain pen and rarely revising manuscript drafts. Just as he left the office, which was at the end of a long corridor and some distance from the front door, he changed his mind about bolting for the exit. Instead he took a nostalgic tour of the building, his pride and joy. Though founded by him, funded by his pleas for cash, and populated by his handpicked team of research astronomers, it welcomed his presence no longer.