All corrections
www.lesswrong.com/posts/MwQRucYo6BZZwjKE7/einstein-s-arrogance
1 correction found
1
Claim
Sir Arthur Eddington led expeditions to Brazil and to the island of Principe
Correction
Eddington led the Príncipe expedition, but the Brazil (Sobral) expedition was led/occupied by Andrew Crommelin (with Charles Davidson), not Eddington.
Full reasoning
Contemporary reporting and historical summaries of the 29 May 1919 eclipse expeditions show that there were *two* teams: one at Príncipe with Prof. Arthur Eddington, and a separate team at Sobral, Brazil, with Dr. Andrew Crommelin and Mr. Charles Davidson.
*Nature* (June 5, 1919) explicitly states that the station at Sobral, Brazil was “occupied by Dr. Crommelin and Mr. Davidson,” while the message from “Prof. Eddington at Prince's Island” is separately reported—indicating Eddington was not leading/occupying the Brazil station.
Therefore, the post’s claim that Eddington “led expeditions to Brazil and to the island of Principe” is incorrect: he led the Príncipe expedition, while the Brazil expedition was led by (or at least staffed/occupied by) Crommelin and Davidson (under the overall organizational direction of Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson and related committees).
2 sources
- The Solar Eclipse (Nature, 5 June 1919)
“...at the station at Sobral, in Brazil, occupied by Dr. Crommelin and Mr. Davidson...” and “The message from Prof. Eddington at Prince's Island...”
- Eddington experiment (1919 eclipse expeditions)
“The Príncipe expedition members were Eddington and Edwin Turner Cottingham... while the Sobral expedition members were Andrew Crommelin and Charles Rundle Davidson...”