You don't have to look very far into the life of Fred Hoyle before coming across descriptions such as "maverick" or "free spirit". For as much as Sir Fred was Britain's best known astronomer for the last third of the 20th century, he was also the kind of cantankerous, combative character to attract these and similarly ambiguous labels.

No doubt vice-chancellors of universities the world over expect their research scientists to be committed and competitive as well as inspired, and as biographer Simon Mitton (himself involved in some of Hoyle's biggest battles) tells, Cambridge got all that and a lot more in Hoyle.

And Hoyle could have asked for no better biographer. Mitton is clearly fond of his sometimes prickly subject, and while he loyally chronicles the Yorkshireman's successes, he doesn't shy away from his invariably public (and often noisy) arguments. Hoyle's abrasive relationship with fellow astronomer Martin Ryle, for example, more than once spills over into apparently open enmity, and it's difficult to feel much sympathy for Hoyle's belligerent and seemingly ego-driven defence of the steady-state universe in defiance of Ryle's mounting evidence for the evolutionary model commonly accepted today.

Through Mitton's description of his subject's TV programs, radio broadcasts and science fiction novels, the reader meets Hoyle the engaging and likeable science populariser, as well as Hoyle the inspired and driven scientist - whose work on nucleosynthesis (the generation of atomic nuclei within stars) won him great acclaim and perhaps brought him very close to the greatest (and most elusive) recognition of all: a Nobel Prize.

Mitton is a natural writer who has a handsome turn of phrase and skill in abundance to explain complex science at its simplest.

He already has many astronomy titles to his name but, so far, just the one biography. Here's hoping that will change.