Pound Receives Eddington Medal

Robert V. Pound, professor of Physics, and Glen A. Rebka Jr. '53 will share the 1965 Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for their experiments helping to confirm Einstein's Principle of Equivalence.

The award recognizes work done in 1960, before Pound began obtaining data 10 per cent below that predicted by Einstein. Had these figures been correct, they would have cast doubt on the validity of the relativity theory. But Pound eliminated the discrepancy by refining his equipment, and confirmed the equivalency principle with increased accuracy--to within 0.0003 per cent of predictions.

Pound, who will be on leave this Spring, said that he might go to London to receive the medal, which is usually awarded for work in theoretical astrophysics. He suggested that the Royal Society had honored him for work that he has gone beyond because "these things take time to digest."

Pound's work was based on the change of frequency in gamma rays--or "red shift"--as they travel upward or downward in a 75-foot column.

Rebka, now an assistant professor at Yale, was a graduate student here at the time of the 1960 experiments.