In 1920, Arthur Eddington, on the basis of the precise measurements of atoms by F.W. Aston, was the first to suggest that stars obtained their energy from nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium. In 1928, George Gamow derived what is now called the Gamow factor, a quantum-mechanical formula that gave the probability of bringing two nuclei sufficiently close for the strong nuclear force to overcome the Coulomb barrier. The Gamow factor was used in the decade that followed by Atkinson and Houtermans and later by Gamow himself and Edward Teller to derive the rate at which nuclear reactions would proceed at the high temperatures believed to exist in stellar interiors.
In 1939, in a paper entitled "Energy Production in Stars", Hans Bethe
analyzed the different possibilities for reactions by which hydrogen is
fused into helium. He selected two processes that he believed to be the
sources of energy in stars. The first one, the proton-proton chain, is the dominant energy source in stars with masses up to about the mass of the Sun. The second process, the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle, which was also considered by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
in 1938, is most important in more massive stars. These works concerned
the energy generation capable of keeping stars hot. They did not
address the creation of heavier nuclei, however. That theory was begun
by Fred Hoyle in 1946 with his argument that a collection of very hot nuclei would assemble into iron.[1]
Hoyle followed that in 1954 with a large paper outlining how advanced
fusion stages within stars would synthesize elements between carbon and
iron in mass.
Quickly, many important omissions in Hoyle's theory were corrected,
beginning with the publication of a celebrated review paper in 1957 by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle (commonly referred to as the B2FH paper).[2]
This latter work collected and refined earlier research into a heavily
cited picture that gave promise of accounting for the observed relative
abundances of the elements. Significant improvements were made by A. G. W. Cameron
and by Donald D. Clayton. Cameron presented his own independent
approach (following Hoyle) of nucleosynthesis. He introduced computers
into time-dependent calculations of evolution of nuclear systems.
Clayton calculated the first time-dependent models of the S-process, the R-process,
the burning of silicon into iron-group elements, and discovered
radiogenic chronologies for determining the age of the elements. The
entire research field expanded rapidly in the 1970s.