Physicists and astronomy—Will you join the dance?

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago when I was a graduate student in physics, I was drafted into the Army and sent to Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. There was plenty of spare reading time for an army private on this tiny atoll, and I had taken along a paperback copy of Fred Hoyle's Frontiers of Astronomy. Hoyle made astronomy exciting and I began to wonder whether I might find a way to enter the field.