100 years of light bending

On May 29th 1919 Eddington and Cottingham measured the position of stars near the sun during a total eclipse observed at the island of Príncipe, off the west African coast. Their results, together with the ones of another expedition undertaken by Crommelin and Davidson to Sobral (Brazil), were announced on November 6th 1919 and confirmed the General Theory of Relativity. This openned a new era in our understanding of gravity, space, time and matter... and made Einstein world famous.

The centenary of Eddington's observation was celebrated by a series of events in São Tomé and Príncipe, with epicentre at Roça Sundy (where the observation took place) on the day of the centenary: May 29th 2019.

Amongst these events, in May 27-28, a selected group of relativists and astrophysicists gathered in Príncipe island to discuss one hundred years of light deflection, where Gr@v's work on black hole shadows was discussed. This meeting was covered by the New York Times.