One of mankind's most reassuring cosmic thinkers died last week. Death came at 61 to cool, unruffled Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, Cambridge University astronomer, in a Cambridge nursing home.
To scientists, Sir Arthur was affectionately known as the senior partner in the firm of "Eddington & [Sir James] Jeans, Interpreters of the Universe." Shy, neat, reed-nosed Sir Arthur looked precisely like the British university don he was, and he discoursed on his cosmic subject with a wit and clarity rare among scientists. He set down in brook-clear language a masterly simplification of Einstein's theory of relativity, spent most of his life explaining...
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