B2FH paper  The B2FH paper was a landmark scientific paper on the origin of the chemical elements. The paper's title is "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars", but it became known as B2FH from the initials of its authors: Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge, William A. Fowler, and Fred Hoyle. It was written from 1955–56 at the University of Cambridge and Caltech, then published in "Reviews of Modern Physics" in 1957. The B2FH paper reviewed stellar nucleosynthesis theory and supported it with astronomical and laboratory data. It identified nucleosynthesis processes that are responsible for producing the elements heavier than iron and explained their relative abundances. The paper became highly influential in both astronomy and nuclear physics. Prior to the publication of the B2FH paper, George Gamow advocated a theory of the Universe in which almost all chemical elements, or equivalently atomic nuclei, were synthesized during the Big Bang. Gamow's theory (which differs from present-day Big Bang nucleosynthesis theory) would imply that the abundance of the chemical elements would remain mostly static over time. Hans Bethe and Charles L. Critchfield had shown that the conversion of hydrogen into helium by nuclear fusion could provide the energy required to power stars, by deriving the Proton proton chain (pp-chain) in 1938. Carl von Weizsäcker and Hans Bethe had independently derived the CNO cycle in 1938 and 1939, respectively. Thus, it was known by Gamow and others that the abundances of hydrogen and helium were not perfectly static. According to their view, fusion in stars would produce small amounts of helium, adding only slightly to its abundance from the Big Bang. This stellar nuclear power did not require substantial stellar nucleosynthesis. The elements from carbon upward remained a mystery. Fred Hoyle offered a hypothesis for the origin of heavy elements. Beginning with a paper in 1946, and expanded upon in 1954, Hoyle proposed that all atomic nuclei heavier than lithium were synthesized in stars. Both theories agreed that some light nuclei (hydrogen, helium and a small amount of lithium) were not produced in stars, which became the now-accepted theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis of H, He and Li. The B2FH paper was ostensibly a review article summarising recent advances in the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. However, it went beyond simply reviewing Hoyle's work, by incorporating observational measurements of elemental abundances published by the Burbidges, and Fowler's laboratory experiments on nuclear reactions.