The idea that there was a definite beginning to the universe as we know it, at a time we can calculate, is well established in the public imagination. It may therefore come as a shock to be reminded that the idea itself—the big bang—is less than a century old, and that the acceptance of the idea as the best explanation for our observations of the cosmos is little more than 50.

For many years, the idea of a beginning seemed so ludicrous to many astronomers that a rival idea, that of an eternal or “steady-state” universe which...

The idea that there was a definite beginning to the universe as we know it, at a time we can calculate, is well established in the public imagination. It may therefore come as a shock to be reminded that the idea itself—the big bang—is less than a century old, and that the acceptance of the idea as the best explanation for our observations of the cosmos is little more than 50.

For many years, the idea of a beginning seemed so ludicrous to many astronomers that a rival idea, that of an eternal or “steady-state” universe which has always existed and always would exist, seemed much more attractive. With “Flashes of Creation,” Paul Halpern, a professor of physics at Philadelphia’s University of Sciences and author of multiple books on the history of his field, has had the bright idea of explaining how the big-bang concept became established by weaving together the biographical stories of the larger-than-life characters who carried on the debate. The rival ideas were promoted in the 1950s by George Gamow in the United States (favoring the big bang) and Fred Hoyle in Britain (favoring the steady state). Gamow was a pioneer in the study of atomic nuclei, while Hoyle famously theorized the formation of elements in stellar furnaces. Both reached far beyond the academic world via popular writing and broadcasts.

Two things make the book stand out, apart from the clear and accessible writing that we have come to expect from Mr. Halpern. First, it rehabilitates the steady-state idea, which is sometimes looked back on with the benefit of hindsight as a cranky notion that flew in the face of the evidence. Far from it: The two rival cosmologies were for a long time on an approximately equal footing, and until the early 1960s the evidence tilted the balance in favor of the steady state. The historical perspective of “Flashes of Creation” highlights the importance of debating scientific issues and not jumping to premature conclusions. The second stand-out feature of this book deals with the way ideas were developed in those simpler days, only a couple of generations ago, when important insights could come from individuals essentially working alone.

What is now seen as the decisive factor in tilting the balance of cosmological thinking in favor of the big-bang idea came in 1964, when radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the weak hiss of radio noise from everywhere in the sky that became regarded as the “echo” of the big bang. This background radiation had actually been predicted by two of Gamow’s younger colleagues, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, almost 20 years earlier, but their work had been forgotten. Ironically, Penzias and Wilson had themselves been supporters of the steady-state model!

Mr. Halpern suggests this discovery produced the triumphant instant recognition of the accuracy of the big-bang model by all except a few die-hard steady-staters, but the truth is a little more subtle. It took a while for the experts to be fully persuaded, and one of the key additional pieces of evidence, which Mr. Halpern mentions but does not give due emphasis to, came a little later in the 1960s, when a team headed by Robert Wagoner calculated how the lightest elements could have been manufactured from hydrogen in the big bang. I was present in 1967 at a talk in Cambridge where Wagoner explained these results, and this was just as significant a breakthrough as the work of Penzias and Wilson.

Which is where there is another twist in the tale. This work on what is now known as “primordial nucleosynthesis” drew on studies of the way the heavier elements—carbon and everything heavier than carbon—are built up by nuclear reactions inside stars. The key insight in that work (stellar nucleosynthesis) had come from Hoyle, who had predicted a certain property of carbon which made all this possible. He needed someone to test whether his hypothesis was right, and suggested a suitable experiment to physicist William Fowler at Caltech. As Mr. Halpern puts it “Hoyle consulted Fowler to see whether the idea might be testable. Fowler agreed to try . . .” He makes it sound so simple! The truth, however, is much more interesting. Fowler initially thought Hoyle was crazy, and declined in no uncertain terms to waste time carrying out the experiment. But Hoyle kept badgering him and in the end, as Fowler recalled to me, “I said I would do it just to shut Fred up,” not expecting that the prediction would be confirmed. But it was.

Over the next few years, Hoyle, Fowler and the husband and wife team of Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge worked out how almost all the elements have been manufactured inside stars. Their work is why we know that we are all literally made of stardust. This is clearly a discovery that deserved a Nobel Prize. One of the many errors made by the Nobel committee over the years, however, is that Fowler (who initially told Hoyle his idea was crazy and to go away) alone received the physics prize for this work, while Hoyle, who had the key insight, was ignored.

The main problem with “Flashes of Creation” is that it is far too short to do justice to such a big story, and this is presumably the reason why some of its details are handled rather superficially. In particular, the work which first made people notice Gamow, the description of a process known as quantum tunneling, is handled in a surprisingly confusing fashion for a writer with a training in science. Mr. Halpern also buys in to a few items of popular mythology which have long since been debunked. For example, Edwin Hubble, the co-discoverer of the expansion of the universe, polished his image with exaggerated stories of his prowess as a sportsman, which Mr. Halpern has swallowed. More seriously, Mr. Halpern repeats the canard that Hoyle came up with the name “big bang” as a term of derision for the rival to his favored idea. In fact, as Hoyle confirmed to me, while writing the script for a radio broadcast he needed a snappy expression to balance “steady state,” and came up with this alliterative pair—an account which rings true to any broadcaster. I was, though, particularly pleased to see due prominence given here to the recent discovery (by Irish researcher Cormac O’Raifeartaigh) of an unpublished paper by Einstein, which contained the first mathematical description of what became the steady-state model of the universe. So much for it being a cranky idea not worth taking seriously.

“Flashes of Creation” is a readable and mostly accurate account of one of the most significant eras in the development of our understanding of the universe. But independent of its actual subject matter, the most important message to take away is that science proceeds not as an orderly progression of insights and discoveries, but as an often messy confrontation with the complexity of the universe.

—Mr. Gribbin is a Senior Research Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. His many books include “In Search of the Big Bang.”