S. Chandrasekhar

It's a Fact 
In the 1940,s Chandrasekhar drove 200 miles round trip each week from Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., to the University to teach a class on stellar atmospheres. One day he insisted on driving from Yerkes to teach the class despite a heavy snowstorm. He ended up teaching a class of only two that day. The two students —Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang—won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957, obtaining this distinction even before Chandrasekhar himself.



S. Chandrasekhar 
``````````(1910-1995)
~~~~~~~~Indian "Starry Messanger" 

Born: 19 October 1910, Punjab Lahore, British India, now in Pakistan. 
Died: August 21, 1995 (aged 84), Chicago, Illinois, U.S. 
Residence : U.S. (1937-1995), British India (1910-1930) Britain (1930-1937) 
Nationality: U.S. (1953-1995), British India (1910-1947) India (1947-1953) 
Field: Astrophysics 
Institutions: University of Chicago, University of Cam-bridge 
Alma mater: Trinity College, Cambridge, Presidency College, Madras 
Academic advisor: R.H. Fowler 
Known for : Chandrasekhar limit, Stellar Dynamics 
Notable prizes: Nobel Prize, Physics (1983) Copley Medal, Royal Society (1984) Nat'l Medal of Sci-ence (1967) 
Religion: None, atheist


In 1999, NASA named the third of its four "great observatories'" after Chandrasekhar. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999.


Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indianborn American Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist who is considered as one of the most important astronomers of 20th century. His work in white dwarfs and stellar evolution was pivotal in the developments in modern astronomy and influenced scientists like Stephan Hawking's later work in black hole theory. The name Chandrasekhar is one of the appellations of God Shiva meaning "holder of the moon" in Sanskrit and is a common Tamil name and Chandrasekhar was known by his colleagues affectionately as "Chandra".


The Chandrasekhar number, an important dimensionless number of magnetohydrody-namics, is named after him. The asteroid 1958 Chandra is also named after Chandrasekhar.


 Chandrasekhar shared the Nobel prize with William Fowler in 1983 for his contributions to theoretical physics specially astrophysics. Chandrasekhar's uncle C. V. Raman also won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1930. 


Chandrasekhar studied at PS high School and then Presidency College in Madras, now Chennai, from which he graduated with a degree in physics. He received his PhD. in 1933 from University of Cambridge and was a research fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge as well. 


Chandrasekhar's most famous success was the astrophysical idea of Chandrasekhar limit. The limit describes the maximum mass (-1.44 solar masses) of a white dwarf star, or equivalent, the minimum mass for which a star will ultimately collapse into a neutron star or black hole (following a supernova). The limit was first calculated by Chandrasekhar while on voyage in a ship from India to Cambridge, England, where he was to study under the eminent astrophysicist, Sir Ralph Howard Fowler. When Chandrasekhar first proposed his ideas, he was opposed by the British physicist Arthur Eddington, and this may have played a part in his decision to move later to the University of Chicago in the United States. 



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Chandrasekhar developed a style of working continuously in one specific area of astrophysics for a number of years; consequently, his working life can be divided into distinct periods. He studied stellar structure, including the theory of white dwarfs, during the years 1929 to 1939, and subsequently focused on stellar dynamics from 1939 to 1943. Next, he concentrated on the theory of radiative transfer and the quantum theory of the negative ion of hydrogen from 1943 to 1950. This was followed by sustained work on hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability from 1950 to 1961. In the 1960s, he studied the equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, but also general relativity. During the period, 1971 to 1983 he studied the mathematil theory of black holes, and, finally, during the late 80s, he worked on the theory of colliding gravitational waves. 


During the years 1990 to 1995, Chandrasekhar worked on a project which was devoted to explaining the detailed geometric arguments in Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica using the Language and methods of ordinary calculus. The effort resulted in the book Newton's Principia for the Common Reader, published in 1995. 

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