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Einstein in Portugal: Eddington's expedition to Principe and the reactions of Portuguese astronomers (1917–25)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

ELSA MOTA ,
PAULO CRAWFORD  and
ANA SIMÕES
ELSA MOTA
Affiliation:
Elsa Mota, Centro de História das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
PAULO CRAWFORD
Affiliation:
Paulo Crawford, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Centro de Astronomia e Astrofísica da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
ANA SIMÕES*
Affiliation:
Ana Simões, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Centro de História das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
*
*email: aisimoes@fc.ul.pt.
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Abstract

Among various case studies addressing the reception of relativity, very few deal with Portugal at either the international or the national level. The national literature on the topic has mainly concentrated on the reactions to relativity of the Portuguese mathematical community. The absence of Portuguese astronomers alongside Eddington during the 1919 expedition to Principe, then a Portuguese island, has been implicitly equated with the astronomical community's lack of interest in the event. In reception studies dealing with general relativity, analysis has tended to focus on the physics and mathematics communities, less on the astronomers. Given that relativity was born at the interface of physics, mathematics and astronomy, reactions of members of these scientific communities depended on differences in shared traditions, values, problems and expectations, as well as on individual practitioners' idiosyncrasies. This paper addresses the contributions of the overlooked Portuguese astronomical community, evaluates the actions and reactions of its members to the expedition and assesses their role in the process of appropriation of relativity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 245 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 British Society for the History of Science

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References

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38 See list of publications in Melo e Simas, op. cit. (31).

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47 Of special help were Crelinsten, op. cit. (7), Part II; Earman and Glymour, op. cit. (45); Warwick, ‘Through the convex looking glass’, op. cit. (45); J. Stachel, ‘Eddington and Einstein’, in idem, Einstein from B to Z, New York, 2002, 453–75; and K. Hentschel, Einstein Tower: An Intertexture of Dynamic Construction, Relativity Theory, and Astronomy, Stanford, 1997.

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69 Dyson, Eddington and Davidson, op. cit. (1). The paper includes a form of diary of the trip that precedes the description of the preparatory work and the analysis of the data.

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76 Crelinsten, op. cit. (7), 76–84, 131–40.

77 OAL Archives. Ref. C-240 (1918/19), letter, Eddington to Campos Rodrigues, 3 August 1919, 43.

78 OAL Archives. Ref. C-240 (1918/19), draft letter, n.d., 44. In the draft letter by Campos Rodrigues to Eddington, the Portuguese director acknowledges the reception of the enlargements of the paper.

79 ‘A luz pesa’ (Light has weight), O Século, 15 November 1919, section ‘Descobertas científicas’ (Scientific discoveries).

80 C. Torrend, ‘O eclipse total de 29 de Maio de 1919, no Brasil’, Brotéria (January 1920), 40–1.

81 Brush, opera cit. (45).

82 Although some of the former characteristics are easily understood as a reaction to monarchical values, nationalism and colonialism were a response to the outcome of the Berlin Conference (1895) and the Portuguese response in securing its African colonies.

83 Rómulo de Carvalho, História do Ensino desde a Fundação da Nacionalidade até ao fim do regime de Salazar-Caetano, Lisboa, 1985.

84 Rogério Fernandes, Uma experiência de formação para adultos na Primeira República. A Universidade Livre para a Educação Popular 1911–1917, Lisboa, 1933. The Free University was founded in Lisbon in 1912 by Alexandre Ferreira. The Popular University started in 1911 in Porto and in 1919 in Lisbon. Among its teachers was the philosopher and mathematician Leonardo Coimbra, who was the first Portuguese to refer to special relativity in a journal article and in a book which was the dissertation prepared for his application for a teaching position in philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Lisbon (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa). Leonardo Coimbra, Criacionismo, Porto, 1912. He was critical of positivism and endorsed idealist views, claiming that our knowledge of the natural world is guided by thought, not by our daily experience. He belonged to the Portuguese Republican Party after 1914 and was minister of public instruction twice, in 1919 and 1923.

85 Portuguese astronomers belonged to the following international associations: International Geodesic and Geophysics Commission, Portuguese–Spanish Association for the Progress of Science, International Astronomical Union, South African Association for the Progress of Science. Most probably, the OAL subscribed to fifty scientific periodicals in the period under consideration. Among them, the Observatory, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and Astronomische Nachrichten were those most used as publication outlets for the astronomers of the OAL.

86 On Melo e Simas see also A. Simões, ‘Considerações históricas sobre ciência e sociedade: divórcio litigioso ou casamento de sucesso?’, in Encontro de Saberes. Três gerações de bolseiros da Gulbenkian (ed. A. Tostões, E. R. Arantes de Oliveira, J. M. Pinto Paixão and P. Magalhães), Lisboa, 2006, 247–57.

87 Leaflet of the lessons of the Free University, Lessons 1 and 8, Boletim Mensal (Monthly Bulletin of the Free University), Lisboa, 1912.

88 M. S. Melo e Simas, Usefulness of Astronomy. Greatness and Magnificence of the Universe. General Idea on the Distribution of Worlds, Lisboa, 1913, 4. From this period in July 1912 there also dates an éloge of Poincaré by Melo e Simas read at the Academy of Sciences of Portugal. Idem, ‘Poincaré e a sua obra’, Relatório dos trabalhos da Academia de Sciências de Portugal (1914–1915) (1915), 2, 17–19.

89 OAL Archives. Ref. DD-454. Undated and unsigned manuscript obituary. Its author was probably Manuel Peres, Melo e Simas's successor in the class of mathematics at the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. Peres's opinion was also shared by the astronomer Pedro José da Cunha, former teacher of Melo e Simas at the Polytechnic School of Lisbon. Cunha, op. cit. (15), 20.

90 OAL Archives. Folder on Melo e Simas. List of titles of lectures on relativity delivered by Melo e Simas at the Free University, from 19 November 1922 to 27 May 1923.

91 Cunha, op. cit. (15).

92 It has so far proved impossible to find the manuscripts of the lectures. According to their titles, the ‘introductory survey’ was succeeded by the ‘spirit of mathematical reasoning’, ‘the spirit of geometrical reasoning’, ‘the spirit of classical mechanics’, ‘physical agents’, ‘the constitution of matter’, ‘the relativism (scales) of space’, ‘preliminaries to relativity’, ‘special relativity’, ‘the mechanics of relativity’, ‘the four dimensions of the Universe’ and, finally, ‘the spirit of general relativity’.

93 M. S. Melo e Simas, ‘Astrologia e Astronomia’, A Folha. Jornal Literário, noticioso e comercial (1o Ano, no 17, 25 Janeiro 1903), 1; idem, ‘A mulher na astronomia’, A Folha. Jornal Literário, noticioso e comercial, localista e independente (2o Ano, no 60, 22 Novembro 1903), 1.

94 Melo e Simas, ‘A mulher na astronomia’, op. cit. (93).

95 M. S. Melo e Simas, ‘A teoria de relatividade’, Almanaques de 1924 (OAL, 1922), 43–57, 43, 44, 56, italics ours. On the occasion of the 1922 solar eclipse Melo e Simas also gives an interview for the newspaper O Século (21 November, 5) in which he refers to Leonardo Coimbra.

96 M. S. Melo e Simas, ‘Ocultação de uma estrela por Júpiter’, op. cit. (10), 115.

97 While we were unable to explain fully Melo e Simas's involvement in Jupiter's observational project to test general relativity, we point to one possible correlation. At the time of Jupiter's observations, Perrine had just written a paper for Astronomische Nachrichten, a journal in which Lisbon astronomers published on a regular basis, reviewing the different methods to test relativity by astronomical means. See Perrine, op. cit. (50).

98 OAL Archives. Ref. C-463 (1915–1929): Correspondence M. Peres (OCR)/Oom (OAL); Peres Júnior, M., ‘The role of astronomy in the development of science’, South African Journal of Science (1922), 19, 32–41Google Scholar. Portuguese translation: O papel da astronomia no desenvolvimento da ciência, Lisboa, 1923.

99 OAL Archives. Ref. C-463 (1915–1929): Correspondence M. Peres (OCR)/Oom (OAL); Peres Júnior, ‘The role of astronomy’, op. cit. (98), 41.

100 OAL Archives. Ref. C-463 (1915–1929): Correspondence M. Peres (OCR)/Oom (OAL), letter, M. Peres to F. Oom, 18 February 1922.

101 OAL Archives. Ref. C-463 (1915–1929): Correspondence M. Peres (OCR)/Oom (OAL), letter, M. Peres to F. Oom, 30 June 1923.

102 OAL Archives. Ref. DD-602. Peres's manuscript pages ‘Geometry and experience’.

103 M. Peres, ‘Determinação pela telegrafia sem fios, da diferença de longitudes de dois pontos que não estão no campo de acção da mesma estação emissora’, Arquivos da Universidade de Lisboa (1916), 1–3.

104 Peres, op. cit. (103), 2.

105 A. Ramos da Costa, Tratado Prático de Cronometria, Lisboa, 1921.

106 A. Ramos da Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, Lisboa, 1921; idem, Espaço, Matéria, Tempo ou a Trilogia Einsteiniana, Lisboa, 1923.

107 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), pp. iii–iv.

108 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), 21.

109 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), 57.

110 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), 42.

111 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), 34.

112 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), 34–5.

113 Costa, A Teoria da Relatividade, op. cit. (106), p. vi.

114 Costa, Trilogia Einsteiniana, op. cit. (106), 62.

115 Costa, Trilogia Einsteiniana, op. cit. (106), 62.

116 Ramos da Costa, A., ‘O ensino das matemáticas deve ser orientado para o estudo da relatividade’, Revista de Obras Públicas e Minas e das Sciências Aplicadas à Indústria (July 1925), 633, 74–6, 76Google Scholar; original emphasis. An explanatory note revealed that the original paper submitted to the congress was not delivered, having been received after the deadline by the anti-relativist Costa Lobo, the Portuguese delegate to the congress.

117 OAL Archives. Ref. C-237: Correspondence G. Coutinho/F.Oom, letter, Coutinho to Oom, 27 February 1923.

118 OAL Archives. Ref. C-237 (1911/1956): Correspondence G. Coutinho /M. Peres. The correspondence about relativity starts in 1939.

119 OAL Archives. Ref.C-237: Correspondence G. Coutinho/F.Oom, letters, Coutinho to Oom, 27 February 1923, 10 July 1924.

120 OAL Archives. Ref.C-237: Correspondence G. Coutinho/F.Oom, letter, Coutinho to Oom, 27 February 1923.

121 OAL Archives. Ref.C-237: Correspondence G. Coutinho/F.Oom, letter, Coutinho to Oom, 10 June 1924.

122 Gago Coutinho, ‘Palestras sobre a Teoria da Relatividade’, in the Brazilian newspaper O Jornal, 6 May 1925. Cited in A. T. Tolmasquin, ‘Constituição e diferenciação do meio científico brasileiro no contexto da visita de Einstein em 1925’, MAST. Notas Técnico-Científicas (July 1996), 1–20, 17.

123 M. dos Reis, O Problema da Gravitação Universal, Coimbra, 1930.

124 P. Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, New York, 2003.