Even the great physicist Enrico Fermi: Fermi examined the problem together with physicist Anthony Turkevich, even though they never published their results. A good description of the work on the mass gap problem can be found in Kragh 1996, pp. 128–32.

was an epoch-making paper: Hoyle 1946.

“I sat in the RAS auditorium”: Hoyle made the presentation on November 8, 1946. Margaret Burbidge was at the time Margaret Peachey; she was to marry astronomer Geoffrey Burbidge in 1948. The quote is from a lecture Margaret Burbidge gave at St. John’s College, Cambridge, on April 16, 2002. An excellent popular description of Hoyle’s work on nucleosynthesis can be found in Mitton 2005, chapter 8.

that particular student decided to ditch: The incident is described in Hoyle 1986b.

Ernst Öpik proposed in 1951: Öpik 1951.