2021/02/24
Albert Einstein's 'God letter' reflecting on religion auctioned for $3m | Albert Einstein | The Guardian
Albert Einstein's 'God letter' reflecting on religion auctioned for $3m
Missive that calls the Bible ‘a collection of primitive legends’ was expected to fetch only half that much
![Physicist Albert Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1954](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e8fc26ef9e5699c05c36ee205235a2e65816d377/0_90_3000_1801/master/3000.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ea3fb80e0eed2ec8207f89f90e10af2f)
A handwritten missive by Albert Einstein known as the “God letter” fetched almost $3m at auction on Tuesday.
Christie’s auction house in New York stated on Tuesday afternoon that the letter, including the buyer’s premium, fetched $2.89m under the hammer. That was almost twice the expected amount.
The one-and-a-half-page letter, written in 1954 in German and addressed to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, contains reflections on God, the Bible and Judaism.
Einstein says: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
The sentence has been hailed as evidence that the physicist, one of the 20th century’s most esteemed thinkers, was an atheist. But Einstein at times said he was not an atheist, and resented being labelled as one.
In the letter – being auctioned at Christie’s in New York on Tuesday – Einstein, a Jew, also articulates his disenchantment with Judaism. “For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people,” he wrote.
![The first page of Albert Einstein’s ‘God Letter’, dated 3 January 1954.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fb5ceb81fe823386e8b22040471ebef94cec272f/0_0_2778_3600/master/2778.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f09c2220a021470e33fc1e004e902964)
“As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”
The letter was written in response to a book by Gutkind, called Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.
The letter had been held among Gutkin’s papers, but it came up for auction in London in 2008. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was beaten in bidding that ended at £170,000.
Acknowledging his disappointment in failing to secure the item, Dawkins said: “This letter was about something very important to Einstein, I suspect.”
According to Einstein: A Life, a biography published in 1996, he was devoutly religious as a child. But at the age of 13, he “abandoned his uncritical religious fervour, feeling he had been deceived into believing lies”.
![Albert Einstein was devoutly religious as a child but at the age of 13, he ‘abandoned his uncritical religious fervour’.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4d9d8f177f28f32606cc053d3ab72c79622a5f48/0_465_4606_2764/master/4606.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=2fa6e5c9bc8e9c8a4b0bc5379b735221)
He said he believed in “Spinoza’s God” – referring to Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch thinker – “who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind”.
On another occasion, he criticised “fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics”.
Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at the Christian thinktank Theos, said: “Einstein offers scant consolation to either party in this debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fits neither the agenda of religious believers or that of tribal atheists.
“As so often during his life, he refused and disturbed the accepted categories. We do the great physicist a disservice when we go to him to legitimise our belief in God, or in his absence.”
[김조년] 외로움 또는 고독함 < 칼럼 < 오피니언 < 기사본문 - 금강일보
Imperial Romance: Desire and Intimacy in Korean Literature, 1905-1945
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7cfdea_5d425f5cb54c41c1bd8a27170d9044ee~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_495,h_684,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/GDDJun222020.webp)
Imperial Romance: Desire and Intimacy in Korean Literature, 1905-1945
Speaker:
Su Yun Kim, Associate Professor, Korean Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, HKU
Respondent: Lin Pei-yin, Associate Professor, School of Chinese, HKU
Moderator: Brian King, Assistant Professor, School of English, HKU
Date: 24 February 2021 (Wednesday)
Time: 7:30 PM
Delivery: via Zoom
Details and registration:
All are welcome. Please register and the Zoom link will be sent to you prior to the event.
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=73279
Drawn from Su Yun Kim’s recent book, Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 (Cornell UP, 2020), this talk discusses three literary works about Korean-Japanese intermarriage, romance, and mixed-race family published during the Japanese colonial era by the famous Korean authors Yi Injik, Yi Kwangsu, and Yi Hyosŏk. These stories focus on Korean men’s intimate and familial relationships with Japanese women while allowing us to explore how Korean men might have felt about becoming proper imperial subjects. This romance literature sheds a new light on the interconnection between gender, race, and imperialism, revealing the colonial male elites’ desire to rise in the imperial hierarchy and to claim their agency within Japanese and global imperialism.
Su Yun Kim is an Associate Professor in Korean Studies at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), specializing in modern Korean literature and culture. Recently she was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute (2019-20), and she has previously taught at Hamilton College. She is the author of Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 and of articles published in journals such as Asian Studies Review, The Journal of Korean Studies and Acta Koreana. Kim is also the co-editor of East Asian Transwar Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
For enquiries, please contact Georgina Challen: gchallen@hku.hk.
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Einstein and Eddington - Wikipedia
Einstein and Eddington
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Einstein and Eddington
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1f/Einsteinandeddingtondvdcover.jpg/215px-Einsteinandeddingtondvdcover.jpg)
BBC DVD cover, featuring Andy Serkis as Einstein (top) and David Tennant as Eddington (bottom)
Written by Peter Moffat
Directed by Philip Martin
Starring Andy Serkis
David Tennant
Lucy Cohu
Jim Broadbent
Rebecca Hall
Theme music composer Nicholas Hooper
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original language English
Production
Producer Mark Pybus
Running time 89 minutes
Release
Original network BBC Two
Original release 22 November 2008
Einstein and Eddington is a British single drama produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, in association with HBO. It featured David Tennant as British scientist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, and Andy Serkis as Albert Einstein. This is the story of Einstein's general theory of relativity, his relationship with Eddington and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of the Great War and Eddington's eclipse observations.
It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 22 November 2008.[1]
Contents
1Plot
2Cast
2.1Germany
2.2Britain
3Production
4References
5External links
Plot[edit]
The prelude is set in 1919 on Eddington's expedition in Príncipe to observe the solar eclipse that year, before moving back in time to 1914. At the outbreak of the First World War, Eddington is appointed chief astronomer at Cambridge by Sir Oliver Lodge and instructed to research Einstein's work and defend the Newtonian status quo. Meanwhile, Einstein is lured back from Zurich to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in an attempt to aid the war effort by embarrassing Britain by disproving the work of its great scientist Isaac Newton. In Berlin, with his marriage already under tension, Einstein falls in love with his cousin Elsa.
A Quaker and therefore unable to go to war, Eddington sets out to bid farewell to his love interest William Marston, as the latter goes off to war as an officer, but just misses Marston's train. He then presents his lecture to his fellow astronomers at the university — defending Newton, but still thinking Einstein might be right — and takes the German Müller family into his home after saving them from a violent anti-German mob. When Einstein's wife arrives in Berlin, she discovers Einstein's affair and leaves him, whilst Eddington faces down protesters who despise his status as a conscientious objector. Einstein arrives late at a demonstration of Fritz Haber's poison gas and is so disgusted by this application of science to murder that he rejects an offer to convert his citizenship back from Swiss to German and refuses to sign the "Manifesto to the Civilized World", a list of prominent German scientists, artists and academics supporting the war.
See also: Tests of general relativity
Eddington finds his research into Einstein's work obstructed by a British ban on the circulation of German scientific literature. Realising that Mercury's orbit is precessing slightly less than it should be according to Newton's laws, he writes to Einstein despite the ban to inquire into his view on the problem. Einstein's relationship with Elsa deepens, and on receiving Eddington's letter he starts work on this new avenue with Max Planck, whilst consoling colleague Planck on the loss of his son in the war despite Einstein's lack of belief in a human-like God or an afterlife. They find that Einstein's work agrees with Mercury's orbit where Newton's does not, and send this reply back to Eddington.
At the same time, Eddington grieves over Marston, among the 15,000 killed by German use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, causing doubts in his faith, but leading him to fight all the more loudly against an expulsion of German scientists from the Royal Society. The expulsion has been initiated by Lodge, whose son was also among the killed and who clings to Newton as a consolation of "order in the universe", but Eddington is unable to admit to Lodge that he too is grieving for a loved one.
News of the gas attack also leads Einstein to an outburst against his fellow scientists, which leads to his being cut off from the university, and — overworking — he falls sick and Elsa leaves him. Even so, he manages to complete his work on general relativity and on how starlight bends and gets this result through to Eddington via Planck. Eddington realises he can prove that space and light are being bent by observing the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 on the west African island of Príncipe, and with Dyson as an ally, manages to gain funding for his expedition, despite Lodge's initial opposition. As the war ends, Eddington's sister and housekeeper, Winifred, sets off to help the Quaker relief effort in war-shattered Germany despite her fears as to Eddington's waning faith.
The action returns to the Principe expedition, delayed by bad weather until the last moment, while Einstein briefly returns to his ex-wife and children. Bringing back two photographs from the eclipse to compare to photographs of the night sky in normal conditions, Eddington compares them in public, with Lodge and Winifred in attendance, and not only proves Einstein right but also finds this confirmation reaffirming his faith — as he states, "I can hear God, thinking". News of his vindication reaches Einstein, and crowds of press arrive at his door just as Elsa returns to him. A year later, in the closing scene, Einstein visits Cambridge and meets Eddington. The closing credits remark on both scientists' later work, Einstein's celebrity and Eddington's obscurity.
1938 Albert Einstein's Commencement Address :: Swarthmore College Sesquicentenial
1938 Albert Einstein's Commencement Address
If you will allow me, I should like first to express the great pleasure [that] President Aydelotte's invitation has procured for me, by giving me an opportunity to speak before this Quaker college. During many years I have witnessed, with admiration and respect, how the Society of Friends [has] labored in the whole world, as unselfishly as usefully, to mitigate the sufferings of men, and to fill the realities of daily life with the teachings of Christ, in their innermost sense. Every man, whoever he may be, if he has a concern for a better fate and a more decent conduct for the world, owes to the Society of Friends profound gratitude. This Society provides a happy testimony against the view that, as has been said, all organization kills the spirit [that] had created it.
We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is true also of our fellows and of the higher animals. We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant. We all are ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self-preservation and that of race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self-preservation. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions. All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.
Though our conduct seems to be very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us. The most evident difference springs from the important part [that] is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolic devices. Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the casual primary instincts and the resulting actions. In that way, imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. Through them, the primary instinct attaches itself to ends which become ever more distant. The instincts bring thought into action, and thought provokes intermediary actions inspired by emotions [that] are likewise related to the ultimate end. Through repeated performance, this process brings it about that ideas and beliefs acquire and retain a strong affective power even after the ends [that] gave them that power are long forgotten. In abnormal cases of such intensive borrowed emotions, which cling to objects emptied of their erstwhile affective meaning, we speak of fetishism.
Yet the process [that] I have indicated plays a very important part also in ordinary life. Indeed, there is no doubt that to this process - which one may describe as spiritualizing of the emotions and of thought - that to it man owes the most subtle and refined pleasures of which he is capable: the pleasure in the beauty of artistic creation and of logical trains of thought.
If I am putting before you today these elementary psychological ideas, it is not, as you may well imagine, from any ambition to deliver a learned lecture. The festive occasion [that] has brought us together as well as my own small knowledge in this field would forbid such a thing. I wanted to use these ideas merely as a means for considering, together with you, the dangers [that] are threatening the moral foundations of social life in our time. Let me add that what I shall have to say on the nature of these moral issues makes no claim to objective validity. It is rather something in the nature of a confession of my own view in this the most important of all human problems. If I discuss it as if it were a settled conception, that is merely so as to present my view as simply and clearly as possible.
As far as I can see, there is one consideration [that] stands at the threshold of all moral teaching. If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery. If, besides that, they use their intelligence from an individualist, i.e., a selfish standpoint, building up their life on the illusion of a happy, unattached existence, things will be hardly better. In comparison with the other elementary instincts and impulses, the emotions of love, of pity, and of friendship are too weak and too cramped to lead to a tolerable state of human society.
The solution of this problem, when freely considered, is simple enough, and it seems also to echo from the teachings of the wise men of the past always in the same strain: All men should let their conduct be guided by the same principles; and those principles should be such, that by following them there should accrue to all as great a measure as possible of security and satisfaction, and as small a measure as possible of suffering.
Of course, this general requirement is much too vague that we should be able to draw from it with confidence specific rules to guide the individuals in their actions. And indeed, these specific rules will have to change in keeping with changing circumstances. If this were the main difficulty that stands in the way of that deep conception, the millenary fate of man would have been incomparably happier than it actually was, or still is. Man would not have killed man, tortured each other, exploited each other by force and by guile.
The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how we can make our teaching so potent in the emotional life of man that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual? We do not know, of course, if the sages of the past have really asked themselves this question, consciously and in this form; but we do know they have tried to solve the problem.
Long before men were ripe, namely, to be faced with such a universal moral attitude, fear of the dangers of life had led them to attribute to various imaginary personal beings, not physically tangible, power to release those natural forces [that] men feared or perhaps welcomed. And they believed that those beings, [that] everywhere dominated their imagination were psychically made in their own image but were endowed with superhuman powers. These were the primitive precursors of the idea of God. Sprung in the first place from the fears which filled man's daily life, the belief in the existence of such beings and in their extraordinary powers has had an influence so strong that it is difficult for us to imagine on men and their conduct. Hence it is not surprising that those who set out to establish the moral idea, as embracing all men equally, did so by linking it closely with religion. And the fact that those moral claims were the same for all men, may have had much to do with the development of mankind's religious culture from polytheism to monotheism.
The universal moral idea thus owed its original psychological potency to that link with religion. Yet in another sense, that close association was fatal for the moral idea. Monotheistic religion acquired different forms with various peoples and groups. Although those differences were by no means fundamental, yet they soon were felt more strongly than the essentials that were common. And in that way religion often caused enmity and conflict, instead of binding mankind together with the universal moral idea.
Then came the growth of the natural sciences, with their great influence on thought and practical life, weakening still more in modern times the religious sentiment of the peoples. The causal and objective mode of thinking - though not necessarily in contradiction with the religious sphere - leaves in most people little room for a deepening religious sense. And because of the traditional close link between religion and morals, that has brought with it the last hundred years or so a serious weakening of moral thought and sentiment. That, to my mind, is a main cause for the barbarization of political ways in our time. Taken together with the terrifying efficiency of the new technical means, that barbarization already forms a fearful threat for the civilized world.
Needless to say, one is glad that religion strives to work for the realization of the moral principle. Yet the moral imperative is not a matter for the church and religion alone but the most precious traditional possession of all mankind. Consider from this standpoint the position of the press, or of the schools with their competitive method! Everything is dominated by the cult of efficiency and of success, and not by the value of things and men in relation to the moral ends of human society. To that must be added the moral deterioration resulting from a ruthless economic struggle. The deliberate nurturing of the moral sense also outside the religious sphere, however, should help also in this, to lead men to look upon social problems as so many opportunities for joyous service toward a better life. For looked at from a simple human point of view, moral conduct does not mean merely a stern demand to renounce some of the desired joys of life but rather a sociable interest in a happier lot for all men.
This conception implies one requirement above all - that every individual should have the opportunity to develop gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering. For everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. Restriction is justified only insofar as it may be needed for the security of existence.
There is one other thing [that] follows from that conception - that we must not only tolerate differences between individuals and between groups, but we should indeed welcome them and look upon them as an enriching of our existence. That is the essence of all true tolerance; without tolerance in this widest sense there can be no question of true morality.
Morality in the sense here briefly indicated is not a fixed and stark system. It is rather a standpoint from which all questions [that] arise in life could and should be judged. It is a task never finished, something always present to guide our judgment and to inspire our conduct. Can you imagine that any man truly filled with this ideal could be content:
Were he to receive from his fellowmen a much greater return in goods and services than most other men ever receive?
Were his country because it feels itself for the time being militarily secure to stand aloof from the aspiration to create a super-national system of security and justice?
Could he look on passively, or perhaps even with indifference, when elsewhere in the world innocent people are being brutally persecuted, deprived of their rights or even massacred?
To ask these questions is to answer them!
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Einstein on on Quakerism By HOWARD H. BRINTON, Nov 1, 1967 FRIENDS JOURNAL
November 1, 1967 FRIENDS JOURNAL 565
Quaker Thought and Life Today
VOLUME 13 NOVEMBER 1, 1967 NUMBER 21
Einstein on on Quakerism
By HOWARD H. BRINTON
Howard Brinton, Quaker historian, was formerly director of Pendle Hill, the Friends' adult study center at Wallingford, Pa. He is still a resident lecturer there.
---
IN 1938 Albert Einstein gave the commencement address at Swarthmore College. He wrote it in German, and Dr. David Mitrany (Rumanian born and English educated), his colleague at the Institute for Advanced Study, translated it into English. Dr. Mitrany was at that time lecturing at Pendle Hill on international relations. On returning to Princeton from Pendle Hill he found that Einstein had taken a sheet of used paper from his scrap-basket and had written on the blank side of it, in German, an addition to the introduction to his address. The other side of the sheet contained a diagram and a number of mathematical notations concerning it.
Einstein, realizing that he was going to speak to the graduating class of a Quaker college, had added a paragraph of appreciation of the Society of Friends. After David Mitrany had translated the new paragraph, Einstein threw the original German version back into his scrapbasket, from which Dr. Mitrany rescued it. He asked the author to sign his name to the new paragraph, saying that he wished to give it to Pendle Hill, where the two of them had spent the night. Einstein readily complied.
David Mitrany then sent the original German writing to us at Pendle Hill, along with a letter expressing thankfulness for his opportunity to lecture there, saying, "1 have received so much more than I have given." He added that he would give his honorarium to the fund then being collected for support of refugee scholars. Regarding Einstein's paragraph on Quakers he wrote (in part): "I thought you might like to have it in its original as a memento for Pendle Hill, and at my request he has signed it for you. If you knew him you would be aware that he is the last person to think his autograph has any value at all; the idea came from me and he agreed to it because of the very deep respect he has for the Society of Friends."
The following is a translation of Einstein's paragraph, made by John R. Gary in 1938:
"At the outset I should like to express my pleasure that through his invitation Mr. Aydelotte [then Swarthmore's president] has given me the opportunity to speak at this Quaker university. With admiration and respect I have seen, in the course of many years, how successfully and selflessly the Society of Friends has worked in the entire world to lessen human suffering and to make the teachings of Christ apply to real life. Everyone who is coucerned about a better lot and a more dignified stature for humanity owes deep gratitude to the Society of Friends. This Society is an admirable testimony against the assertion that every organization by its very nature kills the spirit which has called it into life."
The opposite side of this sheet would be of interest to mathematicians, but only to those who have breathed the air on the upper levels of the subject. Einstein at that time was working hard on his field theory. His special theory of relativity had appeared in 1905, and a iitore generalized form (which included the mathematics of a gravitational held) in 1915. In 1938 he was working on a still more generalized form of the theory to include other kinds of fields. The mathematics on our paper probably include work on this problem.
A young Negro mathematician, Eloise Wiggins, then a student at Pendle Hill, was much interested in these calculations. Following the equations she observed at one point: "Here Dr. Einstein skips two steps. I take them.'
Arthur Eddington - Wikipedia
Arthur Eddington
Arthur Eddington | |
---|---|
![]() Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) | |
Born | Arthur Stanley Eddington 28 December 1882 Kendal, Westmorland, England, United Kingdom |
Died | 22 November 1944 (aged 61) Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, United Kingdom |
Nationality | English |
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | University of Manchester Trinity College, Cambridge |
Known for | Eddington approximation Eddington experiment Eddington limit Eddington number Eddington valve Eddington–Dirac number Eddington–Finkelstein coordinates Eddington–Sweet circulation |
Awards | Royal Society Royal Medal (1928) Smith's Prize (1907) RAS Gold Medal (1924) Henry Draper Medal (1924) Bruce Medal (1924) Knights Bachelor (1930) Order of Merit (1938) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astrophysics |
Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Academic advisors | |
Doctoral students | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar[1] Leslie Comrie Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Hermann Bondi |
Other notable students | Georges Lemaître |
Influences | Horace Lamb Arthur Schuster John William Graham |
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington OM FRS[2] (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour.
Around 1920, he anticipated the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars".[3][4] At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington was the first to correctly speculate that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium.
Eddington wrote a number of articles that announced and explained Einstein's theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world. World War I had severed many lines of scientific communication, and new developments in German science were not well known in England. He also conducted an expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 that provided one of the earliest confirmations of general relativity, and he became known for his popular expositions and interpretations of the theory.
Contents
Early years[edit]
Eddington was born 28 December 1882 in Kendal, Westmorland (now Cumbria), England, the son of Quaker parents, Arthur Henry Eddington, headmaster of the Quaker School, and Sarah Ann Shout.[5]
His father taught at a Quaker training college in Lancashire before moving to Kendal to become headmaster of Stramongate School. He died in the typhoid epidemic which swept England in 1884. His mother was left to bring up her two children with relatively little income. The family moved to Weston-super-Mare where at first Stanley (as his mother and sister always called Eddington) was educated at home before spending three years at a preparatory school. The family lived at a house called Varzin, 42 Walliscote Road, Weston-super-Mare. There is a commemorative plaque on the building explaining Sir Arthur's contribution to science.
In 1893 Eddington entered Brynmelyn School. He proved to be a most capable scholar, particularly in mathematics and English literature. His performance earned him a scholarship to Owens College, Manchester (what was later to become the University of Manchester) in 1898, which he was able to attend, having turned 16 that year. He spent the first year in a general course, but turned to physics for the next three years. Eddington was greatly influenced by his physics and mathematics teachers, Arthur Schuster and Horace Lamb. At Manchester, Eddington lived at Dalton Hall, where he came under the lasting influence of the Quaker mathematician J. W. Graham. His progress was rapid, winning him several scholarships and he graduated with a BSc in physics with First Class Honours in 1902.
Based on his performance at Owens College, he was awarded a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1902. His tutor at Cambridge was Robert Alfred Herman and in 1904 Eddington became the first ever second-year student to be placed as Senior Wrangler. After receiving his M.A. in 1905, he began research on thermionic emission in the Cavendish Laboratory. This did not go well, and meanwhile he spent time teaching mathematics to first year engineering students. This hiatus was brief. Through a recommendation by E. T. Whittaker, his senior colleague at Trinity College, he secured a position at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich where he was to embark on his career in astronomy, a career whose seeds had been sown even as a young child when he would often "try to count the stars".[6]
Astronomy[edit]
In January 1906, Eddington was nominated to the post of chief assistant to the Astronomer Royal at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. He left Cambridge for Greenwich the following month. He was put to work on a detailed analysis of the parallax of 433 Eros on photographic plates that had started in 1900. He developed a new statistical method based on the apparent drift of two background stars, winning him the Smith's Prize in 1907. The prize won him a Fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge. In December 1912 George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, died suddenly and Eddington was promoted to his chair as the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in early 1913. Later that year, Robert Ball, holder of the theoretical Lowndean chair also died, and Eddington was named the director of the entire Cambridge Observatory the next year. In May 1914 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society: he was awarded the Royal Medal in 1928 and delivered the Bakerian Lecture in 1926.[7]
Eddington also investigated the interior of stars through theory, and developed the first true understanding of stellar processes. He began this in 1916 with investigations of possible physical explanations for Cepheid variable stars. He began by extending Karl Schwarzschild's earlier work on radiation pressure in Emden polytropic models. These models treated a star as a sphere of gas held up against gravity by internal thermal pressure, and one of Eddington's chief additions was to show that radiation pressure was necessary to prevent collapse of the sphere. He developed his model despite knowingly lacking firm foundations for understanding opacity and energy generation in the stellar interior. However, his results allowed for calculation of temperature, density and pressure at all points inside a star (thermodynamic anisotropy), and Eddington argued that his theory was so useful for further astrophysical investigation that it should be retained despite not being based on completely accepted physics. James Jeans contributed the important suggestion that stellar matter would certainly be ionized, but that was the end of any collaboration between the pair, who became famous for their lively debates.
Eddington defended his method by pointing to the utility of his results, particularly his important mass–luminosity relation. This had the unexpected result of showing that virtually all stars, including giants and dwarfs, behaved as ideal gases. In the process of developing his stellar models, he sought to overturn current thinking about the sources of stellar energy. Jeans and others defended the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism, which was based on classical mechanics, while Eddington speculated broadly about the qualitative and quantitative consequences of possible proton–electron annihilation and nuclear fusion processes.
Around 1920, he anticipated the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper The Internal Constitution of the Stars.[3][4] At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington correctly speculated that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium, liberating enormous energy according to Einstein's equation E = mc2. This was a particularly remarkable development since at that time fusion and thermonuclear energy, and even the fact that stars are largely composed of hydrogen (see metallicity), had not yet been discovered. Eddington's paper, based on knowledge at the time, reasoned that:
- The leading theory of stellar energy, the contraction hypothesis, should cause stars' rotation to visibly speed up due to conservation of angular momentum. But observations of Cepheid variable stars showed this was not happening.
- The only other known plausible source of energy was conversion of matter to energy; Einstein had shown some years earlier that a small amount of matter was equivalent to a large amount of energy.
- Francis Aston had also recently shown that the mass of a helium atom was about 0.8% less than the mass of the four hydrogen atoms which would, combined, form a helium atom, suggesting that if such a combination could happen, it would release considerable energy as a byproduct.
- If a star contained just 5% of fusible hydrogen, it would suffice to explain how stars got their energy. (We now know that most "ordinary" stars contain far more than 5% hydrogen.)
- Further elements might also be fused, and other scientists had speculated that stars were the "crucible" in which light elements combined to create heavy elements, but without more accurate measurements of their atomic masses nothing more could be said at the time.
All of these speculations were proven correct in the following decades.
With these assumptions, he demonstrated that the interior temperature of stars must be millions of degrees. In 1924, he discovered the mass–luminosity relation for stars (see Lecchini in § Further reading). Despite some disagreement, Eddington's models were eventually accepted as a powerful tool for further investigation, particularly in issues of stellar evolution. The confirmation of his estimated stellar diameters by Michelson in 1920 proved crucial in convincing astronomers unused to Eddington's intuitive, exploratory style. Eddington's theory appeared in mature form in 1926 as The Internal Constitution of the Stars, which became an important text for training an entire generation of astrophysicists.
Eddington's work in astrophysics in the late 1920s and the 1930s continued his work in stellar structure, and precipitated further clashes with Jeans and Edward Arthur Milne. An important topic was the extension of his models to take advantage of developments in quantum physics, including the use of degeneracy physics in describing dwarf stars.
Dispute with Chandrasekhar on existence of black holes[edit]
The topic of extension of his models precipitated his dispute with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was then a student at Cambridge. Chandrasekhar's work presaged the discovery of black holes, which at the time seemed so absurdly non-physical that Eddington refused to believe that Chandrasekhar's purely mathematical derivation had consequences for the real world. Eddington was wrong and his motivation is controversial. Chandrasekhar's narrative of this incident, in which his work is harshly rejected, portrays Eddington as rather cruel, dogmatic, and racist. Eddington's criticism seems to have been based partly on a suspicion that a purely mathematical derivation from relativity theory was not enough to explain the seemingly daunting physical paradoxes that were inherent to degenerate stars, but to have "raised irrelevant objections" in addition, as Thanu Padmanabhan puts it.[8]
Relativity[edit]
During World War I, Eddington was Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, which meant he was the first to receive a series of letters and papers from Willem de Sitter regarding Einstein's theory of general relativity. Eddington was fortunate in being not only one of the few astronomers with the mathematical skills to understand general relativity, but owing to his internationalist and pacifist views inspired by his Quaker religious beliefs,[6][9] one of the few at the time who was still interested in pursuing a theory developed by a German physicist. He quickly became the chief supporter and expositor of relativity in Britain. He and Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson organized two expeditions to observe a solar eclipse in 1919 to make the first empirical test of Einstein's theory: the measurement of the deflection of light by the sun's gravitational field. In fact, Dyson's argument for the indispensability of Eddington's expertise in this test was what prevented Eddington from eventually having to enter military service.[6][9]
When conscription was introduced in Britain on 2 March 1916, Eddington intended to apply for an exemption as a conscientious objector.[6] Cambridge University authorities instead requested and were granted an exemption on the ground of Eddington's work being of national interest. In 1918, this was appealed against by the Ministry of National Service. Before the appeal tribunal in June, Eddington claimed conscientious objector status, which was not recognized and would have ended his exemption in August 1918. A further two hearings took place in June and July, respectively. Eddington's personal statement at the June hearing about his objection to war based on religious grounds is on record.[6] The Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, supported Eddington at the July hearing with a written statement, emphasising Eddington's essential role in the solar eclipse expedition to Príncipe in May 1919. Eddington made clear his willingness to serve in the Friends' Ambulance Unit, under the jurisdiction of the British Red Cross, or as a harvest labourer. However, the tribunal's decision to grant a further twelve months' exemption from military service was on condition of Eddington continuing his astronomy work, in particular in preparation for the Príncipe expedition.[6][9] The war ended before the end of his exemption.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/1919_eclipse_positive.jpg/260px-1919_eclipse_positive.jpg)
After the war, Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe off the west coast of Africa to watch the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. During the eclipse, he took pictures of the stars (several stars in the Hyades cluster include Kappa Tauri of the constellation Taurus) in the region around the Sun.[10] According to the theory of general relativity, stars with light rays that passed near the Sun would appear to have been slightly shifted because their light had been curved by its gravitational field. This effect is noticeable only during eclipses, since otherwise the Sun's brightness obscures the affected stars. Eddington showed that Newtonian gravitation could be interpreted to predict half the shift predicted by Einstein.
Eddington's observations published the next year[10] confirmed Einstein's theory, and were hailed at the time as evidence of general relativity over the Newtonian model. The news was reported in newspapers all over the world as a major story. Afterward, Eddington embarked on a campaign to popularize relativity and the expedition as landmarks both in scientific development and international scientific relations.
It has been claimed that Eddington's observations were of poor quality, and he had unjustly discounted simultaneous observations at Sobral, Brazil, which appeared closer to the Newtonian model, but a 1979 re-analysis with modern measuring equipment and contemporary software validated Eddington's results and conclusions.[11] The quality of the 1919 results was indeed poor compared to later observations, but was sufficient to persuade contemporary astronomers. The rejection of the results from the Brazil expedition was due to a defect in the telescopes used which, again, was completely accepted and well understood by contemporary astronomers.[12]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Minutes_of_Eddington_talk_to_the_Del-Squared_V_Club.jpg/220px-Minutes_of_Eddington_talk_to_the_Del-Squared_V_Club.jpg)
Throughout this period, Eddington lectured on relativity, and was particularly well known for his ability to explain the concepts in lay terms as well as scientific. He collected many of these into the Mathematical Theory of Relativity in 1923, which Albert Einstein suggested was "the finest presentation of the subject in any language." He was an early advocate of Einstein's General Relativity, and an interesting anecdote well illustrates his humour and personal intellectual investment: Ludwik Silberstein, a physicist who thought of himself as an expert on relativity, approached Eddington at the Royal Society's (6 November) 1919 meeting where he had defended Einstein's Relativity with his Brazil-Príncipe Solar Eclipse calculations with some degree of scepticism, and ruefully charged Arthur as one who claimed to be one of three men who actually understood the theory (Silberstein, of course, was including himself and Einstein as the other). When Eddington refrained from replying, he insisted Arthur not be "so shy", whereupon Eddington replied, "Oh, no! I was wondering who the third one might be!"[13]
Cosmology[edit]
Eddington was also heavily involved with the development of the first generation of general relativistic cosmological models. He had been investigating the instability of the Einstein universe when he learned of both Lemaître's 1927 paper postulating an expanding or contracting universe and Hubble's work on the recession of the spiral nebulae. He felt the cosmological constant must have played the crucial role in the universe's evolution from an Einsteinian steady state to its current expanding state, and most of his cosmological investigations focused on the constant's significance and characteristics. In The Mathematical Theory of Relativity, Eddington interpreted the cosmological constant to mean that the universe is "self-gauging".
Fundamental theory and the Eddington number[edit]
During the 1920s until his death, Eddington increasingly concentrated on what he called "fundamental theory" which was intended to be a unification of quantum theory, relativity, cosmology, and gravitation. At first he progressed along "traditional" lines, but turned increasingly to an almost numerological analysis of the dimensionless ratios of fundamental constants.
His basic approach was to combine several fundamental constants in order to produce a dimensionless number. In many cases these would result in numbers close to 1040, its square, or its square root. He was convinced that the mass of the proton and the charge of the electron were a natural and complete specification for constructing a Universe and that their values were not accidental. One of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, Paul Dirac, also pursued this line of investigation, which has become known as the Dirac large numbers hypothesis[14] A somewhat damaging statement in his defence of these concepts involved the fine-structure constant, α. At the time it was measured to be very close to 1/136, and he argued that the value should in fact be exactly 1/136 for epistemological reasons. Later measurements placed the value much closer to 1/137, at which point he switched his line of reasoning to argue that one more should be added to the degrees of freedom, so that the value should in fact be exactly 1/137, the Eddington number.[15] Wags at the time started calling him "Arthur Adding-one".[16] This change of stance detracted from Eddington's credibility in the physics community. The current measured value is estimated at 1/137.035 999 074(44).
Eddington believed he had identified an algebraic basis for fundamental physics, which he termed "E-numbers" (representing a certain group – a Clifford algebra). These in effect incorporated spacetime into a higher-dimensional structure. While his theory has long been neglected by the general physics community, similar algebraic notions underlie many modern attempts at a grand unified theory. Moreover, Eddington's emphasis on the values of the fundamental constants, and specifically upon dimensionless numbers derived from them, is nowadays a central concern of physics. In particular, he predicted a number of hydrogen atoms in the Universe 136 × 2256 ≈ 1.57 1079, or equivalently the half of the total number of particles protons + electrons.[17] He did not complete this line of research before his death in 1944; his book Fundamental Theory was published posthumously in 1948.
Eddington number for cycling[edit]
Eddington is credited with devising a measure of a cyclist's long-distance riding achievements. The Eddington number in the context of cycling is defined as the maximum number E such that the cyclist has cycled E miles on E days.[18][19]
For example, an Eddington number of 70 miles would imply that the cyclist has cycled at least 70 miles in a day on at least 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will (probably) require more than five new long distance rides, since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning. Eddington's own life-time E-number was 84.[20]
The Eddington number for cycling is analogous to the h-index that quantifies both the actual scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist.
The Eddington Number for cycling involves units of both distance and time. The significance of E is tied to its units. For example, in cycling an E of 62 miles means a cyclist has covered 62 miles at least 62 times. The distance 62 miles is equivalent to 100 kilometers. However, an E of 62 miles may not be equivalent to an E of 100 kilometers. A cyclist with an E of 100 kilometers would mean 100 or more rides of at least 100 kilometers were done. While the distances 100 kilometers and 62 miles are equivalent, an E of 100 kilometers would require 38 more rides of that length than an E of 62 miles.
Philosophy[edit]
Idealism[edit]
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Eddington wrote in his book The Nature of the Physical World that "The stuff of the world is mind-stuff."
The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds ... The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it ... It is necessary to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge of our environment from which the world of physics is constructed, has entered in the form of messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness ... Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature ... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.
— Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 276–81.
The idealist conclusion was not integral to his epistemology but was based on two main arguments.
The first derives directly from current physical theory. Briefly, mechanical theories of the ether and of the behaviour of fundamental particles have been discarded in both relativity and quantum physics. From this, Eddington inferred that a materialistic metaphysics was outmoded and that, in consequence, since the disjunction of materialism or idealism are assumed to be exhaustive, an idealistic metaphysics is required. The second, and more interesting argument, was based on Eddington's epistemology, and may be regarded as consisting of two parts. First, all we know of the objective world is its structure, and the structure of the objective world is precisely mirrored in our own consciousness. We therefore have no reason to doubt that the objective world too is "mind-stuff". Dualistic metaphysics, then, cannot be evidentially supported.
But, second, not only can we not know that the objective world is nonmentalistic, we also cannot intelligibly suppose that it could be material. To conceive of a dualism entails attributing material properties to the objective world. However, this presupposes that we could observe that the objective world has material properties. But this is absurd, for whatever is observed must ultimately be the content of our own consciousness, and consequently, nonmaterial.
Ian Barbour, in his book Issues in Science and Religion (1966), p. 133, cites Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World (1928) for a text that argues the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principles provides a scientific basis for "the defense of the idea of human freedom" and his Science and the Unseen World (1929) for support of philosophical idealism "the thesis that reality is basically mental".
Charles De Koninck points out that Eddington believed in objective reality existing apart from our minds, but was using the phrase "mind-stuff" to highlight the inherent intelligibility of the world: that our minds and the physical world are made of the same "stuff" and that our minds are the inescapable connection to the world.[21] As De Koninck quotes Eddington,
There is a doctrine well known to philosophers that the moon ceases to exist when no one is looking at it. I will not discuss the doctrine since I have not the least idea what is the meaning of the word existence when used in this connection. At any rate the science of astronomy has not been based on this spasmodic kind of moon. In the scientific world (which has to fulfill functions less vague than merely existing) there is a moon which appeared on the scene before the astronomer; it reflects sunlight when no one sees it; it has mass when no one is measuring the mass; it is distant 240,000 miles from the earth when no one is surveying the distance; and it will eclipse the sun in 1999 even if the human race has succeeded in killing itself off before that date.
— Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 226
Indeterminism[edit]
Against Albert Einstein and others who advocated determinism, indeterminism—championed by Eddington[21]—says that a physical object has an ontologically undetermined component that is not due to the epistemological limitations of physicists' understanding. The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics, then, would not necessarily be due to hidden variables but to an indeterminism in nature itself.
Popular and philosophical writings[edit]
Eddington wrote a parody of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, recounting his 1919 solar eclipse experiment. It contained the following quatrain:[22]
Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate
One thing at least is certain, LIGHT has WEIGHT,
One thing is certain, and the rest debate—
Light-rays, when near the Sun, DO NOT GO STRAIGHT.
During the 1920s and 30s, Eddington gave numerous lectures, interviews, and radio broadcasts on relativity, in addition to his textbook The Mathematical Theory of Relativity, and later, quantum mechanics. Many of these were gathered into books, including The Nature of the Physical World and New Pathways in Science. His use of literary allusions and humour helped make these difficult subjects more accessible.
Eddington's books and lectures were immensely popular with the public, not only because of his clear exposition, but also for his willingness to discuss the philosophical and religious implications of the new physics. He argued for a deeply rooted philosophical harmony between scientific investigation and religious mysticism, and also that the positivist nature of relativity and quantum physics provided new room for personal religious experience and free will. Unlike many other spiritual scientists, he rejected the idea that science could provide proof of religious propositions.
He is sometimes misunderstood[by whom?] as having promoted the infinite monkey theorem in his 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World, with the phrase "If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum". It is clear from the context that Eddington is not suggesting that the probability of this happening is worthy of serious consideration. On the contrary, it was a rhetorical illustration of the fact that below certain levels of probability, the term improbable is functionally equivalent to impossible.
His popular writings made him a household name in Great Britain between the world wars.
Death[edit]
Eddington died of cancer in the Evelyn Nursing Home, Cambridge, on 22 November 1944.[23] He was unmarried. His body was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium (Cambridgeshire) on 27 November 1944; the cremated remains were buried in the grave of his mother in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge.
Cambridge University's North West Cambridge Development has been named "Eddington" in his honour.
The actor Paul Eddington was a relative, mentioning in his autobiography (in light of his own weakness in mathematics) "what I then felt to be the misfortune" of being related to "one of the foremost physicists in the world".[24]
Obituaries[edit]
- Obituary 1 by Henry Norris Russell, Astrophysical Journal 101 (1943–46) 133
- Obituary 2 by A. Vibert Douglas, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 39 (1943–46) 1
- Obituary 3 by Harold Spencer Jones and E. T. Whittaker, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 105 (1943–46) 68
- Obituary 4 by Herbert Dingle, The Observatory 66 (1943–46) 1
- The Times, Thursday, 23 November 1944; pg. 7; Issue 49998; col D: Obituary (unsigned) – Image of cutting available at O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Arthur Eddington", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
Honours[edit]
Awards
| Named after him
| Service
|
In popular culture[edit]
- Eddington is a central figure in the short story "The Mathematician's Nightmare: The Vision of Professor Squarepunt" by Bertrand Russell, a work featured in The Mathematical Magpie by Clifton Fadiman.
- He was portrayed by David Tennant in the television film Einstein and Eddington, a co-production of the BBC and HBO, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Saturday, 22 November 2008, on BBC2.
- His thoughts on humour and religious experience were quoted in the adventure game The Witness, a production of the Thelka, Inc., released on 26 January 2016.
- Time placed him on the cover on 16 April 1934.[29]
Publications[edit]
- 1914. Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Universe. London: Macmillan.
- 1918. Report on the relativity theory of gravitation. London, Fleetway press, Ltd.
- 1920. Space, Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33709-7
- 1923, 1952. The Mathematical Theory of Relativity. Cambridge University Press.
- 1925. The Domain of Physical Science. 2005 reprint: ISBN 1-4253-5842-X
- 1926. Stars and Atoms. Oxford: British Association.
- 1926. The Internal Constitution of Stars. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33708-9
- 1928. The Nature of the Physical World. MacMillan. 1935 replica edition: ISBN 0-8414-3885-4, University of Michigan 1981 edition: ISBN 0-472-06015-5 (1926–27 Gifford lectures)
- 1929. Science and the Unseen World. US Macmillan, UK Allen & Unwin. 1980 Reprint Arden Library ISBN 0-8495-1426-6. 2004 US reprint — Whitefish, Montana : Kessinger Publications: ISBN 1-4179-1728-8. 2007 UK reprint London, Allen & Unwin ISBN 978-0-901689-81-8 (Swarthmore Lecture), with a new foreword by George Ellis.
- 1930. Why I Believe in God: Science and Religion, as a Scientist Sees It. Arrow/scrollable preview.
- 1933. The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900–1931. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34976-1
- 1935. New Pathways in Science. Cambridge University Press.
- 1936. Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- 1939. Philosophy of Physical Science. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-7581-2054-0 (1938 Tarner lectures at Cambridge)
- 1946. Fundamental Theory. Cambridge University Press.
See also[edit]
Astronomy[edit]
- Chandrasekhar limit
- Eddington luminosity (also called the Eddington limit)
- Gravitational lens
- Outline of astronomy
- Stellar nucleosynthesis
- Timeline of stellar astronomy
- List of astronomers
Science[edit]
- Arrow of time
- Classical unified field theories
- Dimensionless physical constant
- Dirac large numbers hypothesis (also called the Eddington–Dirac number)
- Eddington number
- General relativity
- Introduction to quantum mechanics
- Luminiferous aether
- Parameterized post-Newtonian formalism
- Special relativity
- Theory of everything (also called "final theory" or "ultimate theory")
- Timeline of gravitational physics and relativity
- List of famous experiments
People[edit]
Organizations[edit]
- Quakers (also called the Religious Society of Friends)
- Royal Astronomical Society
- Trinity College, Cambridge
Other[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Arthur Eddington at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Plummer, H. C. (1945). "Arthur Stanley Eddington. 1882–1944". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 5 (14): 113–126. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1945.0007. S2CID 121473352.
- ^ Jump up to:a b The Internal Constitution of the Stars A. S. Eddington The Scientific Monthly Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1920), pp. 297-303 JSTOR 6491
- ^ Jump up to:a b Eddington, A. S. (1916). "On the radiative equilibrium of the stars". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 77: 16–35. Bibcode:1916MNRAS..77...16E. doi:10.1093/mnras/77.1.16.
- ^ Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Douglas, A. Vibert (1956). The Life of Arthur Eddington. Thomas Nelson and Sons. pp. 92–95.
- ^ "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
- ^ Padmanabhan, T. (2005). "The dark side of astronomy". Nature. 435 (7038): 20–21. Bibcode:2005Natur.435...20P. doi:10.1038/435020a.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1983). Eddington: The most distinguished astrophysicist of his time. Cambridge University Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0521257466.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Dyson, F.W.; Eddington, A.S.; Davidson, C.R. (1920). "A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Solar eclipse of May 29, 1919". Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A. 220 (571–581): 291–333. Bibcode:1920RSPTA.220..291D. doi:10.1098/rsta.1920.0009.
- ^ Kennefick, Daniel (5 September 2007). "Not Only Because of Theory: Dyson, Eddington and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition". arXiv:0709.0685. Bibcode:2007arXiv0709.0685K. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2012.07.010. S2CID 119203172.
- ^ Kennefick, Daniel (1 March 2009). "Testing relativity from the 1919 eclipse—a question of bias". Physics Today. 62 (3): 37–42. Bibcode:2009PhT....62c..37K. doi:10.1063/1.3099578.
- ^ As related by Eddington to Chandrasekhar and quoted in Walter Isaacson "Einstein: His Life and Universe", page 262
- ^ Srinivasan, G. (2014). What are the stars?. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 31. ISBN 9783642453021.
|access-date=
requires|url=
(help) - ^ Whittaker, Edmund (1945). "Eddington's Theory of the Constants of Nature". The Mathematical Gazette. 29 (286): 137–144. doi:10.2307/3609461. JSTOR 3609461.
- ^ Kean, Sam (2010). The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements. New York: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 9780316089081.
- ^ Barrow, J. D.; Tipler, F. J. (1986). The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-851949-2.
- ^ "Physics World – IOPscience". physicsworldarchive.iop.org.
- ^ "Eddington number". 16 March 2008.
- ^ Physics World (Institute of Physics) July 2012 page 15
- ^ Jump up to:a b de Koninck, Charles (2008). "The philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington and The problem of indeterminism". The writings of Charles de Koninck. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 978-0-268-02595-3. OCLC 615199716.
- ^ Douglas, A. Vibert (1956). The Life of Arthur Eddington. Thomas Nelson and Sons. p. 44.
- ^ Gates, S. James; Pelletier, Cathie (2019). Proving Einstein Right: The Daring Expeditions that Changed How We Look at the Universe. Public Affairs. ISBN 978-1541762251.
- ^ Quakers and the Arts: "Plain and Fancy"- An Anglo-American Perspective, David Sox, Sessions Book Trust, 2000, p. 65
- ^ "Past Winners of the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal". Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
- ^ "Henry Draper Medal". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 26 January 2013. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
- ^ "A.S. Eddington (1882–1944)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d Who's who entry for A.S. Eddington.
- ^ "TIME Magazine Cover: Sir Arthur Eddington – Apr. 16, 1934". TIME.com.
- ^ "Structural Realism": entry by James Ladyman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Further reading[edit]
- Durham, Ian T., "Eddington & Uncertainty". Physics in Perspective (September – December). Arxiv, History of Physics.
- Kilmister, C. W. (1994). Eddington's search for a fundamental theory. Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-521-37165-0.
- Lecchini, Stefano, "How Dwarfs Became Giants. The Discovery of the Mass–Luminosity Relation{{-"}. Bern Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, pp. 224 (2007).
- Vibert Douglas, A. (1956). The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.
- Stanley, Matthew. "An Expedition to Heal the Wounds of War: The 1919 Eclipse Expedition and Eddington as Quaker Adventurer." Isis 94 (2003): 57–89.
- Stanley, Matthew. "So Simple a Thing as a Star: Jeans, Eddington, and the Growth of Astrophysical Phenomenology" in British Journal for the History of Science, 2007, 40: 53–82.
- Stanley, Matthew (2007). Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A.S. Eddington. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-77097-0.
External links[edit]
Media from Wikimedia Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata
- Works by Arthur Eddington at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Arthur Stanley Eddington at Faded Page (Canada)
- Works by or about Arthur Eddington at Internet Archive
- Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington at Find a Grave
- Trinity College Chapel
- Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944). University of St Andrews, Scotland.
- Quotations by Arthur Eddington
- Arthur Stanley Eddington The Bruce Medalists.
- Russell, Henry Norris, "Review of The Internal Constitution of the Stars by A.S. Eddington". Ap.J. 67, 83 (1928).
- Experiments of Sobral and Príncipe repeated in the space project in proceeding in fórum astronomical.
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Arthur Eddington", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
- Biography and bibliography of Bruce medalists: Arthur Stanley Eddington
- Links to online copies of important books by Eddington: 'The Nature of the Physical World', 'The Philosophy of Physical Science', 'Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons', and 'Fundamental Theory'
- 1882 births
- 1944 deaths
- Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
- Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester
- British anti–World War I activists
- British astrophysicists
- British conscientious objectors
- British pacifists
- Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925)
- Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- English Quakers
- English astronomers
- Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
- Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
- Knights Bachelor
- Members of the Order of Merit
- Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
- People from Kendal
- Presidents of the Physical Society
- Presidents of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Recipients of the Bruce Medal
- Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
- British relativity theorists
- Royal Medal winners
- Senior Wranglers
- 20th-century British scientists