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Is there an Answer
With Kind Permission of the Master and Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge
Willy and Ardie Fowler lived at the western end of California Street. The house was ruled over with some stringency by George the Cat. Willy, in those days, had a fine party trick, perpetrated with the aid of a mirror and a trilby hat, which he dignified as a demonstration of Snell's law.
Because they both understood Snell's law, there was an immediate rapport between them, and It was natural for Fred to seek Willy's help in resolving a strange problem that had been on his mind.
To understand the tormenting problem Itself, one must go back to the 1940s, to the time when Fred first decided that the chemical elements are synthesized from hydrogen by nuclear processes inside stars.
In February, 1945 a lack of data on nuclear masses was very frustrating and the radar establishment where he worked did not run to such information. In March, 1945, while on a visit to Cambridge he ran into Otto Frisch while browsing in the Cavendish Library, and Frisch lent him a compilation of masses which had just been made by Mattauch.
Armed with Mattauch's tables he expected to knock out the whole problem of nucleo synthesis in stars within six months. It was an indication of the measure of error in this presumption that it would take almost twice that length of time just to complete the work which led to Fred's first paper on the subject, "On the Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen.”
Throughout his life he have had continuing trouble with referees. From 1945 to 1952 he was constantly fighting papers past referees which took so great a toll of even his strong constitution that by 1950 he had become exhausted to such a degree that he published nothing from 1950 until his visit to Caltech at the end of 1952. And It was all the pent-up ideas accumulating for almost three years that were hammering away in his head as he walked the short distance to Willy's office on that January day in 1953.
Because they both understood Snell's law, there was an immediate rapport between them, and It was natural for Fred to seek Willy's help in resolving a strange problem that had been on his mind.
To understand the tormenting problem Itself, one must go back to the 1940s, to the time when Fred first decided that the chemical elements are synthesized from hydrogen by nuclear processes inside stars.
In February, 1945 a lack of data on nuclear masses was very frustrating and the radar establishment where he worked did not run to such information. In March, 1945, while on a visit to Cambridge he ran into Otto Frisch while browsing in the Cavendish Library, and Frisch lent him a compilation of masses which had just been made by Mattauch.
Armed with Mattauch's tables he expected to knock out the whole problem of nucleo synthesis in stars within six months. It was an indication of the measure of error in this presumption that it would take almost twice that length of time just to complete the work which led to Fred's first paper on the subject, "On the Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen.”
Throughout his life he have had continuing trouble with referees. From 1945 to 1952 he was constantly fighting papers past referees which took so great a toll of even his strong constitution that by 1950 he had become exhausted to such a degree that he published nothing from 1950 until his visit to Caltech at the end of 1952. And It was all the pent-up ideas accumulating for almost three years that were hammering away in his head as he walked the short distance to Willy's office on that January day in 1953.
With Kind Permission of the Master and Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge
Willy Fowler's introduction to Hoyle that morning must have seemed like a bulldozer clearing out his office. Willy says ... The first major impact of Fred Hoyle on my scientific career came early in 1953 when he came into my office in the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory at Caltech and made a seemingly outlandish claim involving the field of nuclear physics in which I considered myself somewhat of an expert. He claimed that the synthesis of the element carbon from helium in Red Giant stars could take place only if the nucleus of the carbon atom had a very special property at that time unknown. I was very skeptical, to say the least, but my colleague, Ward Whaling, and his students and postdoctoral associates went into the laboratory and found that Fred Hoyle was right, not only in principle, but in precise detail. That made a believer out of me...
Willy Fowler arrive in Cambridge in 1954/1955 as a Fulbright scholar. His intention was to learn more from Fred and if possible collaborate with him.
They did little that year but they did form a collaboration with Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge which paid handsome dividends a few years later.
In 1948 Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold promulgated the steadystate, continuous-creation theory of the expanding universe. This theory denied the existence of an early high temperature, high density phase of the universe during which George Gamow claimed all of the chemical elements in nature were produced. The steady-state theory thus required another site for element synthesis and even earlier, around 1946, Hoyle had espoused the idea that the elements heavier than hydrogen were synthesized in stars. This idea was behind Hoyle's claim concerning carbon. Gamow's scheme worked well enough up to helium but not beyond. Hoyle's special property of carbon made it possible for the carbon to be fused from three helium nuclei in Red Giant stars but not in an early stage of the universe.
With that as the basis, the collaboration, which came to be known as B²FH, was able to work out succeeding fusion processes by which all of the elements up to uranium and thorium could be synthesized in stars either during their evolving lifetime or at their final explosive, supernova stage. Willy says ... The years 1955 to 1957 were the most exciting in my life and resulted in two papers in 1956 and 1957 by B²FH on the synthesis of the elements in stars.
Willy Fowler arrive in Cambridge in 1954/1955 as a Fulbright scholar. His intention was to learn more from Fred and if possible collaborate with him.
They did little that year but they did form a collaboration with Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge which paid handsome dividends a few years later.
In 1948 Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold promulgated the steadystate, continuous-creation theory of the expanding universe. This theory denied the existence of an early high temperature, high density phase of the universe during which George Gamow claimed all of the chemical elements in nature were produced. The steady-state theory thus required another site for element synthesis and even earlier, around 1946, Hoyle had espoused the idea that the elements heavier than hydrogen were synthesized in stars. This idea was behind Hoyle's claim concerning carbon. Gamow's scheme worked well enough up to helium but not beyond. Hoyle's special property of carbon made it possible for the carbon to be fused from three helium nuclei in Red Giant stars but not in an early stage of the universe.
With that as the basis, the collaboration, which came to be known as B²FH, was able to work out succeeding fusion processes by which all of the elements up to uranium and thorium could be synthesized in stars either during their evolving lifetime or at their final explosive, supernova stage. Willy says ... The years 1955 to 1957 were the most exciting in my life and resulted in two papers in 1956 and 1957 by B²FH on the synthesis of the elements in stars.
With Kind Permission of the Master and Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge
QUESTIONS:
1. When you were a child do you recall any specific incidents when your father showed you something in science (astronomy, for example) that inspired you?
When we lived outside Cambridge after World War 2 (sometime after 1947) I remember my father setting up his telescope, which he bought in 1925, in my bedroom to watch the moon rise over the trees in the garden.
As I grew up I realised just how enormous the subject of astronomy was and how very little was understood and very little of the science proven.
I also realised that my father’s understanding of science was enormous and, that if I entered that profession, I would always be compared with my father, so chose to follow other avenues as a career.
1. When you were a child do you recall any specific incidents when your father showed you something in science (astronomy, for example) that inspired you?
When we lived outside Cambridge after World War 2 (sometime after 1947) I remember my father setting up his telescope, which he bought in 1925, in my bedroom to watch the moon rise over the trees in the garden.
As I grew up I realised just how enormous the subject of astronomy was and how very little was understood and very little of the science proven.
I also realised that my father’s understanding of science was enormous and, that if I entered that profession, I would always be compared with my father, so chose to follow other avenues as a career.