Arthur Stanley Eddington (28.12.1882—22.02.1944) — English astrophysicist and physicist, Fellow of the Royal Society (1914). Born in Kendal. Graduated from the universities of Manchester (1902) and Cambridge (1905). In 1906—13 he worked at the Greenwich Observatory, and in 1913—44 was professor at the University of Cambridge and in 1914—44 director of the university observatory.
His work concerned the motion of stars and their internal structure, relativity, the theory of gravitation and quantum theory. He was the first to calculate models of stars in a state of radiative equilibrium. He held the hypothesis that stars consist of plasma. He determined the “lifetime” of the Sun and the temperature of its interior, calculated a limit for the mass of a star, and studied the nature of white dwarfs. In 1920 he put forward the idea of explaining the energy of stars by thermonuclear reactions of the fusion of helium from hydrogen. He established (1924) the relation between the mass and the luminosity of stars.
In 1919 he was the first to detect experimentally the deflection of the light of a star in the gravitational field of the Sun, which A. Einstein had predicted in the general theory of relativity. He was the first to determine the fine-structure constant theoretically.
A member of many academies of sciences and scientific societies, in particular a foreign corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1923). In 1938-44 he was president of the International Astronomical Union, and in 1930—32 of the Physical Society of London.