Hoyle Fred Sir Wickramasinghe N C (5 results)

Hardcover. First American Edition. Octavo, [23.75cm/9.5inches], full gilt-embossed celestial-blue cloth w/ mylar-protected dust jacket, pp. ix, 196, indexed. Illustrated with numerous, charts, graphs &tc. Please feel free to inquire as to particulars and/or additional photographs. . In late 1940, Hoyle left Cambridge to go to Portsmouth to work for the Admiralty on radar research, for example devising a method to get the altitude of the incoming aeroplanes. He was also put in charge of countermeasures against the radar guided guns found on the Graf Spee. Britain's radar project employed more personnel than the Manhattan project, and was probably the inspiration for the large British project in The Black Cloud. Two key colleagues in this war work were Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, and the three had many and deep discussions on cosmology. The radar work paid for a couple of trips to North America, where he took the opportunity to visit astronomers. On one trip to the US he learned about supernovae at Caltech and Mount Palomar and, in Canada, the nuclear physics of plutonium implosion and explosion, noticed some similarity between the two and started thinking about supernova nucleosynthesis. He had an intuition at the time "I will make a name for myself if this works out." Eventually (1954) his prescient and ground breaking paper came out. . In his later years, Hoyle became a staunch critic of theories of abiogenesis to explain the origin of life on Earth. With Chandra Wickramasinghe, Hoyle promoted the hypothesis that the first life on Earth began in space, spreading through the universe via panspermia, and that evolution on Earth is influenced by a steady influx of viruses arriving via comets. His belief that comets had a significant percentage of organic compounds was well ahead of his time, as the dominant views in the 1970s and 1980s were that comets largely consisted of water-ice, and the presence of organic compounds was then highly controversial. In exceptionally good condition In exceptionally good condition.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. First Edition Thus. 381 pages, b/w graphs throughout. Original laminated board binding, fine. Contents clean and tight, unmarked, no inscriptions. A fine tight new copy. Size: 8vo. Book.

Condition: New. pp. 324.

Condition: New. Print on Demand pp. 324 52:B&W 6.14 x 9.21in or 234 x 156mm (Royal 8vo) Case Laminate on White w/Gloss Lam.

Condition: New. PRINT ON DEMAND pp. 324.