[4] Although Hinks had originally intended to measure stellar parallax, and produced an ambitious plan to do so in conjunction with Henry Norris Russell,[5][6] an even more fundamental opportunity arose with the discovery in 1898 of 433 Eros.
[7] An international effort to obtain accurate observations of Eros was put in place under the co-ordination of Maurice Loewy, then director of the Paris Observatory.
[9][note 1] Fortunately he was using a photographic telescope, and was able to obtain some 500 exposures, as results from more traditional visual methods (meridian line or micrometre measurements) would have been far less conclusive.
The results from all the participating observatories had to be collated and analysed, a monumental feat which initially fell to Loewy in Paris.
An additional problem was that it was not clear how the different measurement uncertainties should be treated, especially as different observatories used different methods to calculate the apparent position of Eros.
[15] Hinks resigned from the Cambridge Observatory in 1914 when he was passed over for the directorship in favour of the younger Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), a brilliant mathematician and one of the earliest astrophysicists.
Hinks complained "the whole trend in policy in Cambridge & England generally […] is to take astronomical posts as sustenance for mathematicians.
But relativity is much further beyond the limits of my comprehension, and I shall find when I start to make up my two years arrears of reading that I am hopelessly outclassed.
[20] Hinks was involved in the organisation of the expeditions to observe the total solar eclipse in May 1919 from Príncipe off the west coast of Africa and from Sobral in Brazil,[21] during which his nemesis from Cambridge, Eddington, would provide one of the first proofs of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Mallory (who had also given paid lectures about the 1922 expedition) initially refused to return to Everest without Finch, but was eventually persuaded by members of the British royal family, at Hinks' request.