Perhaps the most amazing thing about this first autobiography of the 20th century's greatest astronomer and cosmologist is that there is very little astronomy and cosmology contained within its 187 pages. What "The Small World of Fred Hoyle" does give us is an amazing insight into the kind of world in which the author spent his formative years. Though his world was "small" in the geographical sense, it was a world which made it possible for Hoyle and others of his generation to assume the status of a giant in scientific achievement and technological development. So we may say that the book is a study of the influences of an era which made possible the tremendous eruption of ideas, discoveries and inventions which poured forth from the fertile mind of its author. Sir Fred Hoyle opens his first chapter with a discussion of trilby hats. The effect of the trilby hat was that it made the face …show more content…
Hoyle put all this down to science becoming big, corporatist and above all conformist. The straitjacket in which scientists now find themselves confined militates against any originality of thought and development of ideas. That Hoyle always desisted from taking the eggs from birds' nests that he and his friends found, preferring instead to leave them and watch what eventually happened, is not only indicative of his scientifically enquiring mind forming at an early age but of the non-conformity for which he was known throughout his adult life. Hoyle's persistent truancy during the early years of his schooling, his feelings that most of what was given to children to learn was essentially useless, are other examples of the ingredients that went into the making of Hoyle's non-conformity with establishment norms and