Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–95,) better known as Chandra, was an Indian-born American astrophysicist who worked on the origins, structure, and dynamics of stars. This winner, jointly with physicist William A. Fowler, of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics is celebrated for his discovery of the Chandrasekhar Limit. Chandrasekhar was the nephew of C. V. Rāman, winner of the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Born in Lahore, British India, now in Pakistan, Chandrasekhar got educated at the Presidency College, Madras, before going to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied under theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. In 1936, Chandrasekhar moved to America to work at the University of Chicago and its Yerkes Observatory. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1953.
Chandrasekhar worked on the final stages of stellar evolution, demonstrating that the fate of a star depends upon its mass—a star eventually collapses to form a dense white dwarf if the star’s mass does not exceed 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar Limit.) A star above this mass collapses further to form a neutron star.
In the 1970s, Chandrasekhar worked on the mathematical theory of black holes. He served as the editor of the Astrophysical Journal 1952–71. He authored 10 books, including Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939) and Newton’s ‘Principia’ for the Common Reader (1995.)
Syracuse University physicist Kameshwar C. Wali wrote Chandra: A Biography of S Chandrasekhar (1991.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
It is, indeed an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature…. What is intelligible is also beautiful.
—Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
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