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Arthur Eddington
Arthur Eddington · George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C., Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Person

Arthur Eddington

1882 – 1944 · aged 62

British astrophysicist (1882-1944)

Born
28 Dec 1882 · Kendal
Died
22 Nov 1944 · Cambridge

Life timeline

Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.

Showing 71 years
  1. 28 Dec 1882BornBorn in Kendal
  2. 1907AwardSmith's Prize
  3. 1914AwardFellow of the Royal Society
  4. 1921 – 1923RolePresident of the Royal Astronomical Society
  5. 1924AwardBruce Medal
  6. 1924AwardGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
  7. 1924AwardHenry Draper Medal
  8. 1926AwardRoyal Society Bakerian Medal
  9. 1928AwardPrix Jules Janssen
  10. 1928AwardRoyal Medal
  11. 1930AwardKnight Bachelor
  12. 1933AwardMessenger Lectures
  13. 1938AwardOrder of Merit
  14. 1943AwardHonorary Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi
  15. 22 Nov 1944DiedDied in Cambridge

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Meanwhile in the world

Major world events during their lifetime (1882 – 1944).

  1. 18961896 Summer Olympics
  2. 1898Spanish–American War
  3. 1904 – 1905Russo-Japanese War
  4. 1914 – 1918World War I
  5. 1915 – 1923Armenian genocide
  6. 1917Balfour Declaration
  7. 1917February Revolution
  8. 1917October Revolution
  9. 1917 – 1922Russian Civil War
  10. 1919 – 1920Paris Peace Conference
  11. 1920Treaty of Versailles
  12. 1933 – 1945The Holocaust
  13. 19341934 FIFA World Cup
  14. 19361936 Summer Olympics
  15. 1937 – 1945Second Sino-Japanese War
  16. 19381938 FIFA World Cup
  17. 1938Munich Agreement
  18. 1939 – 1940Winter War
  19. 1939 – 1945World War II
  20. 1940 – 1945Auschwitz concentration camp
  21. 1941Attack on Pearl Harbor
  22. 1941 – 1945Eastern Front
  23. 1941Operation Barbarossa
  24. 1942 – 1943Battle of Stalingrad

Biography

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astrophysicist and mathematician. 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 foreshadowed the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars". 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 on the Island of Príncipe that provided one of the earliest confirmations of general relativity. As a populariser of science, he became known for his popular expositions and interpretations of Einstein's theory. As a philosopher of science, Eddington speculated on the implications of quantum mechanics on mind and matter.

Text from the Wikipedia article Arthur Eddington, CC BY-SA 4.0

About this information

Dates and life events come from this person’s Wikidata entry.

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