Space Forum / Astronomy / January 2006

"Fred's contributions to astronomy are monumental and far-reaching. Although
he might be best remembered for his more daring scientific pursuits - his
unorthodox cosmology and more recently his support of panspermia, there is
scarcely an area of astronomy that has not been touched in some way by his
genius. Very often modern astronomers are unaware that areas of their own
speciality rest firmly on foundations laid by Fred Hoyle several decades
ago. Fred Hoyle's work on nucleosynthesis in collaboration with William A.
Fowler and Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge led to our present-day
understanding of the origin of chemical elements in stars. It was Fred
Hoyle's original prediction of the presence of an excited state of the
nucleus of the atom Carbon via his studies of the structure and evolution of
stars that heralded a long and profitable collaboration with Caltech nuclear
physicist Willy Fowler."
http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/fredhoyle.html

"Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle worked out the nucleosynthesis
processes that go on in stars, where the much greater density and longer
time scales allow the triple-alpha process (He+He+He -> C) to proceed and
make the elements heavier than helium. "
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/BBNS.html

"He spent much time at Caltech, where he followed up the ideas adumbrated in
his famous 1946 paper, "The Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen"
(published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society), in a
long and fruitful collaboration with Fowler on nuclear processes in stars
and supernovas. This research was codified in a classic 1957 article,
universally referred to as "B^2FH" (published in Reviews of Modern Physics),
which Hoyle and Fowler coauthored with Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge. Many
of us felt that Hoyle should have shared Fowler's 1983 Nobel Prize in
Physics, but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences later made partial amends
by awarding Hoyle, with Edwin Salpeter, its 1997 Crafoord Prize."
http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-11/p75b.html

"In the 1950's and 60's the predominant theory regarding the formation of
the chemical elements in the Universe was due to the work of G.Burbidge,
M.Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle. The BBFH theory, as it came to be known,
postulated that all the elements were produced either in stellar interiors
or during supernova explosions. While this theory achieved relative success,
it was discovered to be lacking in some important respects. To begin with,
it was estimated that only 1-40f all matter found in the Universe should
consist of helium if stellar nuclear reactions were its only source of pro-
duction. In fact, it is observed that upwards of 25% the Universe's total
matter consists of helium---much greater than predicted by theory! A similar
enigma exists for the deuterium. According to stellar theory, deuterium
cannot be produced in stellar interiors; actually, deuterium is destroyed
inside of stars. Hence, the BBFH hypothesis could not by itself adequately
explain the observed abundances of helium and deuterium in the Universe."
http://astron.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html

"In the 1950s Hoyle collaborated with William Alfred Fowler and Geoffrey and
Margaret Burbidge in developing a theory on the origin of the elements,
which earned Fowler the Nobel Prize for physics in 1983. In 1957 they
published I. Synthesis of the Elements in Stars, the first comprehensive
account how the elements are produced in the interior of stars. The "I" in
the title meant that there would be a second paper. However, part II never
appeared. Fowler has acknowledged his debt to Hoyle in his autobiography
written for the Nobel Foundation: "Fred Hoyle was the second great influence
in my life. The grand concept of nucleosynthesis in stars was first
definitely established by Hoyle in 1946.""
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hoyle.htm