Fred Hoyle

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was an astronomer, cosmologist, and science fiction author. He was born in Yorkshire, England in 1915. He read mathematics at Emmanuel College in Cambridge and then went on to teach mathematics at Cambridge University. He would later move to the United States to become a professor of astronomy and philosophy at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York.

Hoyle championed the steady state of cosmology, and coined the phrase "big bang" as a way of ridiculing an alternative theory (which, however, is now widely accepted).