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General relativity provides one explanation for the seemingly anomalous precession of Mercury's perihelion.  There are other explanations based in Newtonian gravity, such as factoring in the pull of the other planets on Mercury's orbit.  One Newtonian explanation requires a slight alternation to the precise inverse-square relation of Newtonian gravity to distance, which is disfavored by mathematicians due to its inelegance in integrating.

General relativity provides one explanation for the seemingly anomalous precession of Mercury's perihelion.  There are other explanations based in Newtonian gravity, such as factoring in the pull of the other planets on Mercury's orbit.  One Newtonian explanation requires a slight alternation to the precise inverse-square relation of Newtonian gravity to distance, which is disfavored by mathematicians due to its inelegance in integrating.

British Historian Paul Johnson declares the turning point in 20th century to have been when fellow Briton Sir [[Arthur Eddington]], an esteemed English astronomer, ventured out on a boat off Africa in 1919 with a local Army unit to observe the bending of starlight around the sun during a total eclipse.  Upon his return to England declared that his observations proven the theory of relativity.  In fact recent analysis of Eddington's work revealed that he was biased in selecting his data, and that overall his data were inconclusive about the theory of relativity. The prediction was later confirmed by more rigorous experiments, such as those performed by the [[Hubble Space Telescope]] {{fact}}.  Lorentz has this to say on the discrepancies between the empirical eclipse data and Einstein's predictions.

British Historian Paul Johnson declares the turning point in 20th century to have been when fellow Briton Sir [[Arthur Eddington]], an esteemed English astronomer, ventured out on a boat off Africa in 1919 with a local Army unit to observe the bending of starlight around the sun during a total eclipse.  Upon his return to England declared that his observations proven the theory of relativity.  In fact recent analysis of Eddington's work revealed that he was biased in selecting his data, and that overall his data were inconclusive about the theory of relativity. The prediction was later confirmed by more rigorous experiments, such as those performed by the [[Hubble Space Telescope]] <ref>http://www.spaceimages.com/gravlen.html</ref> <ref> http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/galaxies/lensing.html </ref> <ref> http://www.iam.ubc.ca/~newbury/lenses/glgallery.html </ref>.  Lorentz has this to say on the discrepancies between the empirical eclipse data and Einstein's predictions.

::''It indeed seems that the discrepancies may be ascribed to faults in observations, which supposition is supported by the fact that the observations at Prince's Island, which, it is true, did not turn out quite as well as those mentioned above, gave the result, of 1.64, somewhat lower than Einstein's figure.''<ref>http://ia331314.us.archive.org/2/items/theeinsteintheor11335gut/11335-h/11335-h.htm</ref>

::''It indeed seems that the discrepancies may be ascribed to faults in observations, which supposition is supported by the fact that the observations at Prince's Island, which, it is true, did not turn out quite as well as those mentioned above, gave the result, of 1.64, somewhat lower than Einstein's figure.''<ref>http://ia331314.us.archive.org/2/items/theeinsteintheor11335gut/11335-h/11335-h.htm</ref>