Einstein and Eddington

Einstein and Eddington is a British single drama produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, in association with HBO. It featured David Tennant as British scientist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, and Andy Serkis as Albert Einstein. This is the story of Einsteins general theory of relativity, his relationship with Eddington and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of the Great War.

The prelude is set in 1919 on Eddingtons 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 by Sir Oliver Lodge and instructed to research Einsteins work and defend the Newtonian status quo, whilst Einstein is tempted back from Zurich to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in an attempt to aid the war effort by embarrassing Britain in 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 also says farewell to his friend William Marston as the latter goes off to war as an officer in the Cambridgeshire Regiment, but just misses Williams train as he goes to say goodbye to him before he departs. 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 antiGerman mob. When Einsteins wife arrives in Berlin, she discovers Einsteins 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 Habers 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 a Manifesto to the Civilized World, a list of prominent German scientists, artists and academics supporting the war. ........

Source: Wikipedia