Fred Hoyle

From EvoWiki

Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), an eminent British astronomer and proponent of the steady-state model of a universe without a Big Bang.

Since all science besides cosmology points to a finite history of the Earth and the solar system, he tried to adjust biology and paleontology to his worldview. He dabbled in fields where he didn't have any professional expertise, for example by introducing panspermia as an alternative to abiogenesis. Of course this doesn't detract from his standing as an astronomer.

To ornithologists he is mainly known as the primary author of an absurd and speculative flight-of-fancy (no pun intended) on why the fossils of Archaeopteryx are forgeries, that appeared in 1986. Hoyle's allegations were most extensively refuted by the late Alan Charig and his colleagues at the British Museum of Natural History. Hoyle is also the individual credited with the "747-analogy".

Today his ideas are represented by his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe.