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 defined two processes that he believed to be the sources of energy in stars. the first one, the proton–proton chain reaction, 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 more important in more massive main-sequence stars. these works concerned the energy generation capable of keeping stars hot. a clear physical description of the proton–proton chain and of the cno cycle appears in a 1968 textbook. bethe's two papers 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 thermodynamically into iron hoyle followed that in 1954 with a paper describing how advanced fusion stages within massive stars would synthesize the elements from carbon to iron in mass.