Fred Hoyle was a Yorkshire truant who became the voice of British astronomy. For fifty years, he spoke out for astronomy in the newspapers, on government committees, at scientific meetings, in popular books and on the radio. He devised a never-ending history of the universe, and worked out how the elements were made. He founded a prestigious institute for theoretical astronomy and built a giant telescope, and if it rained on his summer holiday, he sat in his caravan and wrote science fiction novels for his legions of fans around the world.
Fred Hoyle also claimed that diseases fall from...