1920, Eddington told the story of Dallos and Icarus in a speech given by the British Academic Association. From here we can get a glimpse of the soul of a great explorer.

Eddington said this:

"In ancient times, two pilots fitted themselves with wings. Dallos flew safely across the sea in the air not too high, and was duly praised when she landed. Young Icarus flew high against the sun, and finally the wax that bound his wings melted, and his flight was a complete failure. When measuring their achievements, perhaps we should say a few words for Icarus. First-class authorities told us that he was only performing aerobatics, but I prefer to look at it this way: it was he who clearly exposed the structural defects of the plane in his time. Therefore, in science, cautious Dallos will also apply his theory to places he thinks are very safe, but his potential weaknesses will not be exposed because of his excessive caution. Icarus will stretch his theory to the limit of strength until the fragile joints crack. Just a spectacular stunt? Maybe there is some truth. He is also an ordinary person. However, although he is doomed to fail to reach the sun and completely solve the mystery of the plane structure, we can hope to get some inspiration from his failure to build a better plane. "

Arthur. Eddington was born on February 20th, 882 in Kent, westmorland. My father is a headmaster, and the school is St. lagat School in Kent. This school has a long history. /kloc-Dalton taught here 0/00 years ago.

Kent's academic tradition has influenced Eddington, where scientific work is regarded as the most important public service, not from practical interests, but from social contributions.

1884, when Eddington was less than two years old, his father died of illness. Mother and her brothers and sisters moved to Weston River.

In childhood, Eddington's behavior was different from that of ordinary children. He is crazy about numbers, especially big numbers. Once, he counted the words in the Bible. He also learned the multiplication table of 24×24.

This hobby remained until Eddington became a famous scientist. 1939, Eddington published Philosophy of Physical Science, in which the first sentence mentioned:

I believe there is1574772413627500257605539115546804475438+0791452765438+.

This is even more incredible than counting the number of Ganges sands. It is true that there is no distinction between right and wrong here, but it shows that physicists have a pleasure in computing problems.

The famous Russell once asked Eddington whether he calculated it himself or asked someone else to do it. Eddington said it was the result of his own work during a stopover trip.

1926, Eddington gave a party speech to the British academic society in Oxford, and his beginning was like this:

The quality of the stars is quite stable, and the quality of the sun is-I wrote it on the blackboard:

200 billion tons.

I hope I didn't write the wrong number of zeros. Everyone won't mind missing one or two zeros, but nature will care.

1907, Eddington entered the Greenwich Observatory as a senior assistant at the invitation of Sir Christie, a royal astronomer. He worked for five years, and in 19 12, he was elected as the plumian chair professor of Cambridge university, replacing George? Sir Darwin. Robert? After the death of Sir Burr 19 14, Eddington became the director of the Cambridge Observatory. He has been doing this extraordinary work for 30 years.

Eddington's most important contribution to physics is to establish modern theoretical astrophysics and open up a new discipline of star structure, organization and evolution. 19 16, Eddington began to study the star structure in order to study the brightness of Cepheid variable stars. He published the book Internal Structure of Stars, paying more attention to Einstein's theory. It was at his suggestion that two groups, one led by Eddington himself, went to principe island in west Africa and the other led by astronomer Cromelin, went to Sobral in South America. After checking the results repeatedly, they confirmed Einstein's great prediction.

Eddington's other works include: Mathematical Relativity (1923), Report on Relativity of Gravity (19 15), Space, Time and Gravity (1920), Stars and Atoms (15). The latter two books are particularly popular.

Eddington's main contribution to astrophysics is in the field of stellar structure. Not only that, he has also achieved fruitful results in other fields. He put forward "Eddington approximation", which is an approximate solution to the radiation transfer problem. He also solved the formation of spectral lines in stellar atmosphere, which is particularly important in the initial stage of studying stellar atmosphere theory. Eddington determines the mass of a single star by analyzing the curvature of light according to the star line of a binary star. This problem is the principle of the larger problem of light scattering and transmission in layered plane atmosphere.

Eddington first revised the "growth curve" method and applied it to the interstellar absorption line problem. Eddington introduced the concept of "dilution factor", which has been used ever since.

He also believes that the radial velocity determined by the interstellar absorption line has a certain relationship with the latitude of the galaxy, and the radial velocity determined by this relationship has an amplitude, which should be half that of the star absorption line. This guess has been confirmed by actual observation.

Interestingly, Eddington had a big fight with Jones and Milne, and they argued endlessly. As an imperfect man, Eddington showed the intensity of his struggle.

Eddington said, "Professor Milne didn't elaborate on why his conclusion was so different from mine. I am not interested in the rest of the article, and it is absurd to have any illusions about its correctness. "

It can be seen that Eddington did not treat this argument calmly and fairly. But one little thing seems to indicate Eddington's attitude towards this debate:

Eddington and his sister often go to Newmark for horse racing. Hardy asked Eddington if he had ever gambled on horses. Eddington answered no, but he emphasized that it was only once. Hardy asked what it was like at that time. Eddington said that there was a horse named Jones flying, and he couldn't resist its lithe posture, so he made a bet. As a result, everyone asked him if he won, and Eddington said with his unique smile:

"no!"

This anecdote has been told by people to this day.

Eddington himself has many excellent qualities, such as not being afraid of violence for faith. This is also the scientific embodiment of his pursuit of the sun.

19 17, the world war continues. Britain has promulgated a draft law, and Eddington fully meets the requirements. But Eddington himself is an anti-war, and he is a fanatic Quaker.

Friends all know that Eddington opposes military service because of his beliefs. But this is troublesome, because resisting the government for this reason can only be put into barracks and forced to serve. It is disgusting that the government does not welcome anti-war people with humanitarian stance. Social trends also think that people who refuse to perform military service are shameful, whether you really want peace or not.

So, good friends of Cambridge University tried to get the Ministry of the Interior to order Eddington to postpone his military service. The reason they put forward is that Eddington plays an important role in science, and it is a great loss for him to join the army in the long run. The whole scientific community feels regret and sorrow for the death of the famous scientist Mosley in Garipoli.

Originally, Sir Mora and others' suggestions were about to succeed, and the Ministry of the Interior gave Eddington a letter, as long as Eddington signed it. However, the outspoken Eddington added a sentence in his letter, saying that if he could not postpone his military service, he would refuse to do so for another reason, that is, he believed in Quaker doctrine. Of course, the military is very angry about this, which makes the relaxation of military service encounter resistance.

Eddington thinks that many of his Quaker friends are peeling potatoes in military camps in northern England, and he has no reason not to be with his friends. Finally, after the Royal Astronomer Dyson, Eddington finally postponed his military service. And confirmed that if the war ends before May 19 19, he will lead an expedition to verify Einstein's prediction. Things are as smooth as what happened later.

Eddington is an interpreter and advocate of relativity. He made great contributions and found some mistakes of Einstein.

In his later years, Eddington was overconfident about his cosmological constant, cosmological model, the degeneracy of relativity, the formation of black holes and the method of "unifying quantum theory and relativity", but he was also conceited and confused to some extent.

He said: "I believe that people will understand me when they realize that they have to understand me and that' explaining Eddington' has become fashionable." However, what people describe is: "In his last days, due to long-term fantasy, his face was as white as a dead man and he looked very painful."

1944165438+1October, 62-year-old Eddington passed away. Russell, an outstanding encyclopedic figure in the 20th century, wrote: "With the death of Sir Eddington, astrophysics lost its most outstanding representative."