Shortly before the start of World War II, several theoretical
physicists, including Hans Bethe and Carl von Weizsacker, advanced the
idea that the sun derives it energy from nuclear reactions within its
core. C. C. Lauritsen and William Fowler, nuclear physicists at
Caltech's Kellogg Laboratory, were among the first experimentalists to
appreciate the application of nuclear physics to stellar interiors.
Post-war strategies for studying nuclear processes in the stars
included an innovative series of unofficial, weekly seminars with Mt.
Wilson astronomers at director Ira Bowen's house, the testing of
Bethe's carbon cycle in Kellogg, and the collaboration with a diverse
group of scientists ranging from cosmologist Fred Hoyle to astronomers
Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge. The events leading up to the
publication of the 1957 paper by Fowler, Hoyle, Burbidge, and Burbidge,
in The Reviews of Modern Physics, now regarded as a watershed in the
history of nuclear astrophysics, are discussed. For his work in low-energy
nuclear astrophysics, Fowler won the 1983 Nobel Prize in
physics