Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

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" 1U
A daughter snaps Gold on a garden tightrope . . .
and climbing a 15-foot pole.
few apply quite the determination that
does Professor Thomas Gold, 46, director
of the Center for Radiophysics &
Space Research and chairman of the department
of astronomy.
Gold has hitched his academic star to
the "steady state" theory of the creation
of the universe, and his personal star to
a steady program of exercise that even
includes tightrope walking. He has been
a member of the faculty since 1959, before
and since which time he has
achieved international fame for his outspoken
advocacy of the steady state point
of view.
His neighbors in Cayuga Heights are
accustomed to seeing him moving deftly
across a tightwire or climbing nimbly up
a fifteen-foot pole he has set up in his
garden. "Tightrope walking is especially
good for you," Gold comments. "It gives
you balance."
One Thanksgiving Day he startled
passersby when he chipped away the ice
from his seventeen-foot boat and went
water-skiing on the frigid waters of Cayuga
Lake. At 7 another frosty November
morning eyebrows were lifted in a
hotel lobby when Gold and visiting Australian
astronomer Harry Messel sauntered
out in bathing trunks and raincoats
to go water-skiing. "I cannot fathom
what the hotel people thought," the Cornell
scientist said in recounting the incident.
Gold is so devoted to exercise that he
often runs from one building on the
campus to another. He also shuns elevators
and bounds up the stairs of classroom
and research buildings two at a
time, sometimes alarming slower moving
students or colleagues.
"You might as well get in some exercise,"
he says. "The average person gets
little enough as it is."
Leaning back in a chair with hands
clasped behind his head, Gold looks
more like a graduate student than a cosmologist
whose views about the origin
and nature of the universe have had a
profound effect on contemporary astronomical
thought.
"I've always liked athletic things," he
said. "As a boy I thought I'd like to become
a ski professional." Instead he went
to Cambridge University for more than
ten years where as an undergraduate he
was a long distance runner, pole vaulter,
and high jumper. He came to Cornell in
1959 after two years as a professor of
astronomy at Harvard University.
"I think this is a great area," Gold
says of Ithaca and the surrounding Finger
Lakes Region. "It's not many places
where you can be teaching in a classroom
or be conducting an experiment and then
be water skiing on a big lake in fifteen
minutes or snow skiing in half an hour."
His enthusiasm for skiing isn't confined
to Cayuga's waters. He's also an expert
snow skier and has participated in
races on the slopes of Switzerland. He's
also a familiar figure at Greek Peak, a
ski area near Ithaca, as well as at centers
in Vermont, Switzerland, and South
America.
What does a world-famous astronomer
think about as he's skimming along a
lake or streaking down a ski slope? "It's
too demanding to think about anything
else," he remarks. "One must keep his
wits about him or he'll wish he had."
Gold's Minnesota-born wife Merle and
their three blonde daughters, Linda 17,
Lucy 12, and Tanya 6, all share his love
for exercise—especially skiing.
The Austrian-born Gold drew international
attention in 1948 when with
Herman Bondi of the University of London
and Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University
he originated the theory of the
continuous creation of matter, known, as
the "steady state" theory. This theory
holds that the universe has no beginning
and no end and that matter is constantly
being created, the new galaxies and star
clusters formed within an expanding universe.
This theory opposed that held by
many other scientists that the universe
had its origin as a result of a tremendous
explosion between five and ten billion
years ago. The latter theory is known as
the "big bang" theory [NEWS, May 15,
1961].
Gold has also come to be known for
his advocacy of a theory that many areas
of the moon are covered with a soil made
of finely pulverized rock.
He says his vigorous physical activities
are based on his conviction that a sound
mind should be paired with a sound
body. Gold's trim, muscular five-foot
eight body is apparent proof his physical
culture theory is working.
May 1967 27