B2FH Paper - Recognition

Recognition

Because this work firmly established the field of stellar nucleosynthesis in astronomical consciousness, it was highly celebrated, including at special conferences and in review papers for that purpose. One author, William Fowler, was awarded half of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for his lifetime work measuring the rates in his laboratory of thermonuclear reactions in stars; but despite some suspicions that prize had nothing to do with coauthorship of B2FH and everything to do with his painstaking laboratory research, whose results guided all researchers attempting to create computer models of evolution of stars. Some argue that Fred Hoyle also deserved similar recognition for his creation of the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, and he did share the 1997 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy with Edwin Salpeter. Geoffrey Burbidge wrote in 2008, "Hoyle should have been awarded a Nobel Prize for this and other work. On the basis of my private correspondence, I believe that a major reason for his exclusion was that W.A. Fowler was believed to be the leader of the group." Burbidge states that this perception is not true and also points to Hoyle's earlier papers from 1946 as indicators of Hoyle's authorship of the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. and from 1954. Burbidge continued that "Hoyle's work has been undercited in part because it was published in an astrophysical journal, and a new one at that (the very first volume, in fact), whereas B2FH was published in a well-established physics journal, Reviews of Modern Physics. When B2FH was first written, preprints were distributed to the nuclear physics community. Willy Fowler was very well known as a leader in that community, and the California Institute of Technology already had a news bureau that knew how to spread the word."

In 2007 a conference was held in Pasadena, California to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of this influential paper.