Arthur Stanley Eddington, 1882 - 1944

Abstract

In Sir Arthur Eddington British astronomy has suffered a most serious loss. It is essentially as an astronomer that Eddington must be considered, though he was much else. Astronomy had played its historical part and reached perhaps its highest state of complacency in the days of Laplace; thereafter the science tended to become ‘set in its ways’ till it acquired a visible new life with a fresh critical spirit about the beginning of the present century. Meanwhile physics was undergoing a similar rejuvenation, marked notably by the discovery of X-rays in 1895 and the enunciation of the quantum theory in 1901. Both the sciences had the means within themselves of making independent progress, and the development of physics has been conspicuous. But the parallel advancement of the two is advantageous to both and the mutual service which they could render to one another is illustrated in the highest degree by the work of Eddington. He was among the first to teach the unity of Nature working on the cosmic and the atomic scale, and this unified view he preserved with characteristic courage.