He was Plumian Professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy at
Cambridge University in England, and director of the Cambridge
Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, which he founded. He was famous as
a science popularizer and a little less famous as a novelist; his
novels include ?The Black Cloud" (1957), in which a gas cloud from outer
space turns out to be sentient; "Fifth Planet" (1963, written with his
son
Geoffrey Hoyle); "The Inferno" (1973); and "The Incandescent Ones" (1977).