2 - The astrophysicist

Summary

It will be clear from Chapter 1 that the story of Eddington's intellectual life cannot be dissociated from that of the fascinating revolution of ideas in physics between 1900 and 1930.1 shall not try to do so, but my history of the general scientific ideas will be a very partial one, directed to those aspects which bear in any way on Eddington's development. The first part of this chapter is concerned with personal features of Eddington's earlier life that I believe to be relevant in judging his later work. More detailed biographical detail is to be found in Arthur Stanley Eddington (Douglas 1956) on which I have relied. The historical context of the advent of special relativity comes next, and finally I deal with Eddington's definitive account of stellar structure as the rounding off of his earliest preoccupations.

Eddington's early life

Eddington was born in Kendal on 28 December 1882, into a Quaker family, and his faith played an important part throughout his life. He showed evidence from an early age of a prodigious memory and an interest in very large numbers. The family removed to Somerset after his father's death and Eddington received a Somerset County Council Scholarship in 1896 to go to Owen's College, Manchester though he was still under sixteen. His four year course there began with a general year, and then followed three years of physics (under Schuster) and mathematics (under Lamb). Lamb provided more than mathematics; his prose style was the model for Eddington's own carefully nurtured style.