Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley (1882--1944), a British astronomer. As chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, 1906--13, he began his studies of the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He was appointed professor of astronomy at Cambridge University in 1913. Eddington achieved scientific fame for his interpretations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. He was a member of the team whose observations of a total solar eclipse in 1919 verified Einstein's thesis that light rays are bent near the sun.