From 9 November 2007:

Our reader poll of significant Friends has thrown up many fascinating paths to follow. A reader mentioned Marie Stopes as an influential Quaker. Was she? We took a look at this fiery radical's life and discovered Quaker links in the family (her paternal grandfather was a Friend) but a rather coy approach by Marie herself. It seems she attended Meeting when young and may have found a claim to Quakerism helpful when being accused (as she was) of Godlessness. It all appears to have stemmed from a quote in a book published in 1993 (Crown and Mitre - religion and society in modern Europe in the 1960s, published by Boydell Press) which referred to her as 'the Quaker Marie Stopes'.

In the Friends House Library manuscript collection there is a letter from Marie to M Ethel Crawshaw written in 1923 with permission for one of her poems to be reprinted in The Friend. And we know that Marie mixed with Friends, such as Thomas and Anna Haslam, also pioneers of female suffrage and birth control. But we feel she might not have been convinced.

We know from our researches that Arthur Eddington was a very private man. So there might be a stirring of controversy when the BBC screens a drama next year which does bring the personal side of Eddington’s life into focus. The film, Einstein and Eddington is currently being filmed on location in Croatia, Hungary and Cambridge. It tells the story of how Eddington championed Einstein's general theory of relativity and brought the theory to world attention. Readers might be intrigued at the choice of actor to play Eddington. It's David Tennant, the current Doctor Who.