Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley (1882-1944), knight, theoretical physicist and astrophysicist

Arthur Stanley Eddington was born in 1888 into a Quaker family, and remained of that religion all his life. He was educated at Brynmelyn School, Weston-super-Mare, and Owen’s College, Manchester, before coming up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1902. He graduated in 1905 and spent a short time in Cambridge as a mathematical coach, but in 1906 went to Greenwich as Chief Assistant to the Astronomer Royal. He returned to Cambridge in 1913 as Plumian Professor of Astronomy, and the following year was also appointed Director of the Cambridge Observatory. He held these posts for the rest of his life. Eddington’s most significant scientific contributions were to the study of the structure and movements of stars, the implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the search for a ‘fundamental theory’ to unite the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics.