Arthur Stanley Eddington, Plumlan Professor of As- 

 tronomy, Cambridge, England, since 19 13, and director of 

 the observatory there since 1914, was born in Kendal in 1882, 

 and is unmarried. Manchester, Oxford, Dublin, Bristol and 

 Edinburgh have conferred distinguished degrees upon him. He 

 was president of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1921-1923; 

 Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1906- 

 1913. In 1928 he was awarded the Royal Medal of the 

 Royal Society. He has written widely on subjects dealing 

 with physics, mathematics and astronomy. But before the 

 appearance of his epoch-making volume. The Nature of the 

 Physical World, in 1928, Professor Eddington was not known 

 outside the circle of his fellow scientists. With publication of 

 that book, however, he acquired world-wide reputation as an 

 exponent of Einstein's theory of relativity ; and also as a scientist 

 who did not fear to approach research in the spirit of the ideal- 

 ist and the mystic. Publication of The Nature of the Physical 

 World was the signal for the appearance of many books by 

 scientists, conceding abandonment of the mechanistic theory of 

 the universe in favor of a theory involving infinite purpose and 

 direction back of cosmic phenomena. In this sense Eddington's 

 work marked the beginning of an epoch in scientific thinking. 

 Others had commenced to think in similar terms; but it re- 

 mained for him to focus public attention. Professor Edding- 

 ton is an earnest Quaker; and into his work intrudes consider- 

 able of the quiet faith and mysticism of that noble belief. 



