Born in Austria, he was briefly interned in Britain in 1940. There he met Hermann Bondi. Later they worked with Fred Hoyle on radar, and proposed the steady state theory in 1948. Gold moved to America. He was the first to suggest, in 1968, that pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. Less omniscient was his suggestion that the lunar surface might be a thick dust structure that would collapse under the weight of a lunar landing vehicle. His suggestion that hydrocarbons, rather than being nonrenewable fossil remains, mainly come from deep within the Earth is yet to be proven.