Bondi, Hermann (1919–2005)

Austrian-born British cosmologist. In 1948 he joined with English astronomer and cosmologist Fred Hoyle and Austrian-born US astronomer Thomas Gold in developing the steady-state theory of cosmology, which suggested that matter is continuously created in the universe. He was knighted in 1973.

Bondi was born in Vienna and studied mathematics at Cambridge University, England. In 1940 while interned as an ‘enemy alien’ in the UK, during World War II, he met Thomas Gold. Bondi returned to Cambridge University in 1941 and began to do naval radar work for the British Admiralty in 1942; through this work he met Fred Hoyle. Gold soon joined them at Cambridge and the three discussed cosmology and related subjects. In 1954 Bondi took a chair in applied mathematics at King's College, London. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1959 and in 1983 became master of Churchill College, Cambridge, England.

The steady-state model stimulated much debate because, while its ideas were revolutionary, it was fully compatible with existing knowledge. However, evidence that the universe had once been denser and hotter emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, and the theory was abandoned by most scientists.

Bondi also described the likely characteristics and physical properties of gravitational waves, and demonstrated that such waves are compatible with and are indeed a necessary consequence of the general theory of relativity.