Arthur Stanley Eddington

(1882-1944)

The English physicist and astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington was born in a small small town Kendal in the north of England. He studied at the Cambridge university, and with 1906 on 1913 was the assistant to the oldest in England the Greenwich observatory. Since 1913 Eddington - the professor and director of an observatory of the Cambridge university.

First Eddingtons works as astronomer are connected to studying movements of stars and a structure of star systems. But his main merit - that he has created the theory of an internal structure of stars. Deep penetration into physical essence of the phenomena and masterful possession of methods of the most complicated mathematical calculations have allowed Eddington to receive a number of basic results in such areas of astrophysics, as an internal structure of stars, a condition of an interstellar matter, movement and distribution of stars in the Galaxy.

Eddington has calculated diameters of some red stars - giants, has defined density of the dwarfish satellite of a star Sirius it appeared extraordinary high. Eddington work by definition of density of a star was an incitement for development of physics of superdense gas.

Eddington was the good interpreter of the general theory of a relativity of Einstein. He has carried out the first experimental check of one of the effects predicted by this theory: a deviation of rays of light in a field of gravitation of a massive star. It managed to him to be made during a full eclipse of the Sun in 1919.

Together with other scientists Eddington has put in pawn bases of modern knowledge of a structure of stars.