Eddington experiment was an observational test of General Relativity , organised by the British astronomers Frank Watson Dyson and Arthur Stanley Eddington in 1919 . The observations were of the total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 and were carried out by two expeditions , one to the West African island of Príncipe , and the other to the Brazilian town of Sobral . The aim of the expeditions was to measure the gravitational deflection of starlight passing near the Sun . The value of this deflection had been predicted by Albert Einstein in a 1911 paper , and was one of the tests proposed for his 1915 theory of General Relativity . Following the return of the expeditions , the results were presented by Eddington to the Royal Society of London , and , after some deliberation , were accepted . Widespread newspaper coverage of the results led to worldwide fame for Einstein and his theories
total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919
Solar eclipse of May 29, 1919
Eddington experiment