Science Stories   /     Eddington's Eclipse and Einstein's Celebrity

Description

Eddington's Eclipse and Einstein's Celebrity Philip Ball's tale is of a solar eclipse 100 years ago observed by Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer who travelled to the remote island of Principe off the coast of West Africa and saw the stars shift in the heavens. His observations supplied the crucial proof of a theory that transformed our notions of the cosmos and turned a German physicist named Albert Einstein into an international celebrity. But this is also a tale of how a Quaker tried to use science to unite countries. The reparations imposed on Germany after the war extended into science too as many in Great Britain and other Allied nations felt that German science should be ostracised from the international community. As a Quaker, Eddington wanted just the opposite: to see peaceful cooperation restored among nations. Producer: Erika Wright

Subtitle
Philip Ball tells the story of Arthur Eddington's confirmation of general relativity.
Duration
1674
Publishing date
2018-12-12 21:00
Link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001jqh
Contributors
  BBC Radio 4
author  
Enclosures
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p06tq8s1.mp3
audio/mpeg