Einstein and Eddington is a British single drama produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, in

association withHBO. It featured David Tennant as British scientist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington,
and Andy Serkis as Albert Einstein. This is the story of Einstein's general theory of relativity, his
relationship with Eddington and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of
the Great War.
It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 22 November 2008.[1]
The prelude is set in 1919 on Eddington's expedition in Prncipe to observe the solar eclipse that
year, before moving back in time to 1914. At the outbreak of the First World War, Eddington is
appointed chief astronomer at Cambridge bySir Oliver Lodge and instructed to research Einstein's
work and defend the Newtonian status quo. Meanwhile, Einstein is lured back from Zurich to
the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in an attempt to aid the war effort by embarrassing
Britain by disproving the work of its great scientist Isaac Newton. In Berlin, with his marriage already
under tension, Einstein falls in love with his cousin Elsa.
A Quaker and therefore unable to go to war, Eddington sets out to bid farewell to his friend William
Marston, as the latter goes off to war as an officer, but just misses Marston's train. He then presents
his lecture to his fellow astronomers at the university defending Newton, but still thinking Einstein
might be right and takes the German Mller family into his home after saving them from a violent
anti-German mob. When Einstein's wife arrives in Berlin, she discovers Einstein's affair and leaves
him, whilst Eddington faces down protesters who despise his status as a conscientious objector.
Einstein arrives late at a demonstration of Fritz Haber's poison gas and is so disgusted by this
application of science to murder that he rejects an offer to convert his citizenship back from Swiss to
German and refuses to sign the"Manifesto to the Civilized World", a list of prominent German
scientists, artists and academics supporting the war.
See also: Tests of general relativity