Eddingtoniana

Last Saturday I watched the BBC drama "Einstein and Eddington".  I will just say that the wonder isn't that it was done well, but that it was done at all.  For a program about such an abstruse subject (the 1919 Eclipse test of general relativity) to appear on television is pretty unusual; for it to involve such high profile actors as Andy Serkis ("Gollum") and David Tennant ("Doctor Who") seems little short of a miracle.  So, instead of grumping about the inaccuracies, I will just provide a few links to some background material:

A. S. Eddington, "Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation", The Physical Society of London, 1920. (Eddington's report on general relativity, which got a mention in the program.)

Daniel Kennefick, "Not only because of Theory: Eddington and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition", arXiv:0709.0685, 2007. (A thorough debunking of the rumours that Eddington fudged the results of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition.)

And, finally, that famous little story about Eddington (here told in Walter Grazer, "Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes", Oxford, 2002):

Eddington was painfully shy but far from modest. His illustrious pupil Subramanyam Chandrasekhar recalled overhearing a conversation between Eddington and another astronomer, Ludwig Silberstein: Silberstein believed that he himself had a firm grasp of Einstein's theory and complimented Eddington for being one of the three people in the world to understand it.  When Eddington hesitated Silberstein asked why he was flaunting his false modesty.  'Not at all', came the reply, 'I am trying to think who the third one might be.'