ADDRESS OF THE RETIRING PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY IN AWARDING THE BRUCE MEDAL TO PROFESSOR A. S. EDDINGTON

Abstract

The Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is presented each year by the Society for distinguished services to astronomy, and is sustained by the income of a fund given in 1897 by Catherine Wolf Bruce. The announcement of the award of this medal and the opportunity to describe briefly the scientific work upon which the award is based form the greatest privilege which falls to the lot of the retiring president of the Society. It is with great pleasure, and with the realization that the honor is shared quite as fully by the Society as by the recipient, that I announce its award by unanimous vote of the directors to Professor Arthur Stanley Eddington, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, England. Professor Eddington is one of the group of brillaint and comparatively young Englishmen who are contributing in so important a way to the present remarkable progress in physical science. Born in 1882, he received his training at the University of Manchester and later at that great center of English science, Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was Senior Wrangler in 1904. He was Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory of Greenwich between 1906 and 1913, and then became Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. His scientific work has been recognized widely at home and abroad and has brought him numerous distinctions. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1914, and was President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1921 to 1923. The contributions of Professor Eddington have been mainly to the physical and mathematical branches of astronomy, and within this field many of his investigations have been of fundamental importance. The active and versatile character of his researches is indicated by the fact that since 1907 he has published more than fifty articles in scientific journals, on