Arthur Eddington (1882–1944,) fully Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. Considered the founder of astrophysics, he investigated the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He used Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to explain the bending of light by gravity that he observed in the 1919 solar eclipse.
Born in Kendal, Westmorland, in Cumbria, Eddington studied at Manchester and Cambridge. He was appointed chief assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1906) and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge (1913.) In the following year, he also became director of the university observatory. His first book, Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Universe (1914,) dealt with the kinematics and dynamics of stars in the Milky Way.
In 1916, Eddington deduced a theoretical relationship between the mass of a star and its total output of radiation. It suggested that extreme values of density may exist in stars such as white dwarfs. He published these investigations in the Internal Constitution of the Stars (1926.) Concurrently, he had become genuinely interested in Einstein’s theory of relativity. He published a nonmathematical account of the theory of relativity, Space, Time, and Gravitation (1920,) which he extended to his Mathematical Theory of Relativity (1923.) He wrote a series of scientific books for the layman.
In 1935, Eddington had a row with astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar about the death of stars and the creation of black holes. Consequently, Chandrasekhar left Cambridge University for the U.S.; his theory was proved right three decades later. Eddington never retracted his attack on Chandrasekhar.
Canadian astronomer Vibert Douglas wrote The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (1956.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Arthur Eddington
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic – like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the cat without a grin and the grin without a cat are equally set aside as purely mathematical fantasies.
—Arthur Eddington
Topics: Mathematics
Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.
—Arthur Eddington
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
—Arthur Eddington
Topics: Time
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
—Arthur Eddington
Topics: Mankind, Man
I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.
—Arthur Eddington
Topics: Stars
Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man.
—Arthur Eddington
Topics: Instincts
It cannot be denied that for a society which has to create scarcity to save its members from starvation, to whom abundance spells disaster, and to whom unlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction, there is an ominous cloud in the distance though at present it be no bigger than a man’s hand.
—Arthur Eddington
Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.
—Arthur Eddington
Topics: Nature
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