No Shadow of a Doubt
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No Shadow of a Doubt∗ Amitabh Virmani No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Daniel Kennefick Princeton University Press Pages: 411, 2019, Price: $29.95 (ISBN-13:978-0-691-18386-2)
The British eclipse expeditions of 1919 that confirmed Einstein’s theory of relativity made Einstein an overnight celebrity. Kennefick’s book details the excitement, adventure, and fanfare of these expeditions that changed the face of physics forever. The events come to life with the personal and scientific experiences of the principal characters: Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, Frank Dyson, and many others. The book is unique in its attention to detail. It deals with the political and scientific turbulence that surrounded the principal characters with great care. It debunks all the incorrect claims that have emerged over the years, maligning the expedition teams, especially Eddington. Thereby, as the title goes, it leaves no shadow of a doubt on the science of the 1919 observations. The book was published in 2019, marking the 100th anniversary of the famous eclipse expeditions. The expeditions aimed to measure deflection in the position of stars visi-
ble in the background of the 29 May 1919, total solar eclipse. That the stars were deflected was suggested by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Frank Dyson— the British Astronomer Royal at the time— devised the experiment. Two teams went on expeditions to observe the eclipse at Sobral (Brazil) and the island of Principe (off the West coast of Africa) respectively. At the sites, the teams took photographs of the star fields near the eclipsed Sun. The Sorbal team had two telescopes and Principe team had one. The science of these expeditions has been widely discussed in modern times: there are several websites dedicated to it, e.g., https://eclipse1919.org/; several conferences and lectures have been organised celebrating the expeditions over the years; there are even movies about it, e.g., Einstein and Eddington. However, a historically precise, accessible account was missing. Kennefick’s book fills in that gap. Numerous over-simplified accounts of the story are available. In several such accounts, Eddington is made the sole leader of the expeditions and the word “fraud” is sometimes mentioned. Such claims gather further support from sentences from famous books such as Hawking’s Brief History of Time. Hawking writes: “It is ironic, therefore, that the later examination of the photographs taken on that expedition showed the errors were as great as the effect they were trying to measure. Their
∗ Vol.25, No.11 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-020-1079-7
RESONANCE | November 2020
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measurement had been sheer luck, or a case of knowing the result they wanted to get, not an uncommon occurrence in science.” Sean Carroll, in his textbook Spacetime and Geometry writes: “Later re-evaluation of Eddington’s results has cast doubt upon whether he actually obtained the precision that was originally claimed;...”. Kennefick’s
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