Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

For more information on Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, visit Britannica.com.

Indian–American astrophysicist (1910–1995)

Chandrasekhar, who was born in Lahore, which is now in Pakistan, studied at the Presidency College, Madras, gaining his MA in 1930. He then went to Cambridge University, England, where in 1933 he both obtained his PhD and was elected to a fellowship. In 1936 he moved to America and has worked since 1937 at the University of Chicago and the Yerkes Observatory, serving as the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service professor of Theoretical Astrophysics from 1952 to 1986, and as professor emeritus from 1986. He became an American citizen in 1953.

Chandrasekhar's major fields of study were stellar evolution and stellar structure and the processes of energy transfer within stars. It was known that stars could end their life either dramatically and explosively as a supernova or as an extremely small dense star of low luminosity known as a white dwarf. But what decided the particular path a star took was answered by Chandrasekhar in his Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939). He showed that when a star has exhausted its nuclear fuel, an inward gravitational collapse will begin. This will eventually be halted in most stars by the outward pressure exerted by a degenerate gas, i.e. a gas that is completely ionized, with the electrons stripped away from the atomic nuclei, and that is very highly compressed. The star will therefore have shrunk into an object composed of material so dense that a matchbox of it would weigh many tons.

Chandrasekhar showed that such a star would have the unusual property that the larger its mass, the smaller its radius. There will therefore be a point at which the mass of a star is too great for it to evolve into a white dwarf. He calculated this mass to be 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. This has since become known as the Chandrasekhar limit. A star lying above this limit must either lose mass before it can become a white dwarf or take a different evolutionary path. In support of Chandrasekhar's theoretical work, it has been established that all known white dwarfs fall within the predicted limit.

In the 1970s Chandrasekhar devoted much time to the mathematical theory of black holes. He later made a detailed study of Newton's work and published his results in his Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.

For his numerous contributions to astrophysics, Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for physics with William Fowler.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) worked on the origins, structure, and dynamics of stars and earned a prominent place in the annals of science. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist's most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly the dying fragments known as white dwarf stars.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indian-born American astrophysicist and applied mathematician whose work on the origins, structure, and dynamics of stars secured him a prominent place in the annals of science. His most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly white dwarf stars, which are the dying fragments of stars. Chandrasekhar demonstrated that the radius of a white dwarf star is related to its mass: the greater its mass, the smaller its radius. Chandrasekhar made numerous other contributions to astrophysics. His expansive research and published papers and books include topics such as the system of energy transfer within stars, stellar evolution, stellar structure, and theories of planetary and stellar atmospheres. For nearly twenty years, he served as the editor-in-chief of the Astrophysical Journal, the leading publication of its kind in the world. For his immense contribution to science, Chandrasekhar, who died in 1995, received numerous awards and distinctions, most notably the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research into the depths of aged stars.

Chandrasekhar, better known as Chandra, was born on October 19, 1910, in Lahore, India (now part of Pakistan), the first son of C. Subrahmanyan Ayyar and Sitalakshmi nee (Divan Bahadur) Balakrishnan. Chandra came from a large family: he had two older sisters, four younger sisters, and three younger brothers. As the firstborn son, Chandra inherited his paternal grandfather's name, Chandrasekhar. His uncle was the Nobel Prize-winning Indian physicist, Sir C. V. Raman.

Chandra received his early education at home, beginning when he was five. From his mother he learned Tamil, from his father, English and arithmetic. He set his sights upon becoming a scientist at an early age, and to this end, undertook at his own initiative some independent study of calculus and physics. The family moved north to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh when Chandra was six. In 1918, the family moved again, this time south to Madras. Chandrasekhar was taught by private tutors until 1921, when he enrolled in the Hindu High School in Triplicane. With typical drive and motivation, he studied on his own and steamed ahead of the class, completing school by the age of fifteen.

After high school, Chandra attended Presidency College in Madras. For the first two years, he studied physics, chemistry, English, and Sanskrit. For his B.A. honors degree he wished to take pure mathematics but his father insisted that he take physics. Chandra resolved this conflict by registering as an honors physics student but attending mathematics lectures. Recognizing his brilliance, his lecturers went out of their way to accommodate Chandra. Chandra also took part in sporting activities and joined the debating team. A highlight of his college years was the publication of his paper, "The Compton Scattering and the New Statistics." These and other early successes while he was still an eighteen-year-old undergraduate only strengthened Chandra's resolve to pursue a career in scientific research, despite his father's wish that he join the Indian civil service. A meeting the following year with the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, whom Chandra, as the secretary of the student science association, had the honor of showing around Madras, and Chandra's attendance at the Indian Science Congress Association Meeting in early 1930, where his work was hailed, doubled his determination.

Upon graduating with a M.A. in 1930, Chandra set off for Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research student, courtesy of an Indian government scholarship created especially for him (with the stipulation that upon his return to India, he would serve for five years in the Madras government service). At Cambridge, Chandra turned to astrophysics, inspired by a theory of stellar evolution that had occurred to him as he made the long boat journey from India to Cambridge. It would preoccupy him for the next ten years. He also worked on other aspects of astrophysics and published many papers.

In the summer of 1931, he worked with physicist Max Born at the Institut für Theoretische Physik at Göttingen in Germany. There, he studied group theory and quantum mechanics (the mathematical theory that relates matter and radiation) and produced work on the theory of stellar atmospheres. During this period, Chandra was often tempted to leave astrophysics for pure mathematics, his first love, or at least for physics. He was worried, though, that with less than a year to go before his thesis exam, a change might cost him his degree. Other factors influenced his decision to stay with astrophysics, most importantly, the encouragement shown him by astrophysicist Edward Arthur Milne. In August 1932, Chandra left Cambridge to continue his studies in Denmark under physicist Niels Bohr. In Copenhagen, he was able to devote more of his energies to pure physics. A series of Chandra's lectures on astrophysics given at the University of Liège, in Belgium, in February 1933 received a warm reception. Before returning to Cambridge in May 1933 to sit his doctorate exams, he went back to Copenhagen to work on his thesis.

Chandrasekhar's uncertainty about his future was assuaged when he was awarded a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. During a four-week trip to Russia in 1934, where he met physicists Lev Davidovich Landau, B. P. Geraismovic, and Viktor Ambartsumian, he returned to the work that had led him into astrophysics to begin with, white dwarfs. Upon returning to Cambridge, he took up research of white dwarfs again in earnest.

As a member of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1932, Chandra was entitled to present papers at its twice monthly meetings. It was at one of these that Chandra, in 1935, announced the results of the work that would later make his name. As stars evolve, he told the assembled audience, they emit energy generated by their conversion of hydrogen into helium and even heavier elements. As they reach the end of their life, stars have progressively less hydrogen left to convert and emit less energy in the form of radiation. They eventually reach a stage when they are no longer able to generate the pressure needed to sustain their size against their own gravitational pull and they begin to contract. As their density increases during the contraction process, stars build up sufficient internal energy to collapse their atomic structure into a degenerate state. They begin to collapse into themselves. Their electrons become so tightly packed that their normal activity is suppressed and they become white dwarfs, tiny objects of enormous density. The greater the mass of a white dwarf, the smaller its radius, according to Chandrasekhar. However, not all stars end their lives as stable white dwarfs. If the mass of evolving stars increases beyond a certain limit, eventually named the Chandrasekhar limit and calculated as 1.4 times the mass of the sun, evolving stars cannot become stable white dwarfs. A star with a mass above the limit has to either lose mass to become a white dwarf or take an alternative evolutionary path and become a supernova, which releases its excess energy in the form of an explosion. What mass remains after this spectacular event may become a white dwarf but more likely will form a neutron star. The neutron star has even greater density than a white dwarf and an average radius of about .15 km. It has since been independently proven that all white dwarf stars fall within Chandrasekhar's predicted limit, which has been revised to equal 1.2 solar masses.

Unfortunately, although his theory would later be vindicated, Chandra's ideas were unexpectedly undermined and ridiculed by no less a scientific figure than astronomer and physicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, who dismissed as absurd Chandra's notion that stars can evolve into anything other than white dwarfs. Eddington's status and authority in the community of astronomers carried the day, and Chandra, as the junior, was not given the benefit of the doubt. Twenty years passed before his theory gained general acceptance among astrophysicists, although it was quickly recognized as valid by physicists as noteworthy as Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Ralph H. Fowler, and Paul Dirac. Rather than continue sparring with Eddington at scientific meeting after meeting, Chandra collected his thoughts on the matter into his first book, An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure, and departed the fray to take up new research around stellar dynamics. An unfortunate result of the scientific quarrel, however, was to postpone the discovery of black holes and neutron stars by at least twenty years and Chandra's receipt of a Nobel Prize for his white dwarf work by fifty years. Surprisingly, despite their scientific differences, he retained a close personal relationship with Eddington.

Chandra spent from December 1935 until March 1936 at Harvard University as a visiting lecturer in cosmic physics. While in the United States, he was offered a research associate position at Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wisconsin, staring in January 1937. Before taking up this post, Chandra returned home to India to marry the woman who had waited for him patiently for six years. He had known Lalitha Doraiswamy, daughter of Captain and Mrs. Savitri Doraiswamy, since they had been students together at Madras University. After graduation, she had undertaken a master's degree. At the time of their marriage, she was a headmistress. Although their marriage of love was unusual, as both came from fairly progressive families and were both of the Brahman caste, neither of their families had any real objections. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the young bride and groom set out for the United States. They intended to stay no more than a few years, but, as luck would have it, it became their permanent home.

At the Yerkes Observatory, Chandra was charged with developing a graduate program in astronomy and astrophysics and with teaching some of the courses. His reputation as a teacher soon attracted top students to the observatory's graduate school. He also continued researching stellar evolution, stellar structure, and the transfer of energy within stars. In 1938, he was promoted to assistant professor of astrophysics. During this time Chandra revealed his conclusions regarding the life paths of stars.

During the World War II, Chandra was employed at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, working on ballistic tests, the theory of shock waves, the Mach effect, and transport problems related to neutron diffusion. In 1942, he was promoted to associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Chicago and in 1943, to professor. Around 1944, he switched his research from stellar dynamics to radiative transfer. Of all his research, the latter gave him, he recalled later, more fulfillment. That year, he also achieved a lifelong ambition when he was elected to the Royal Society of London. In 1946, he was elevated to Distinguished Service Professor. In 1952, he became Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Astrophysics in the departments of astronomy and physics, as well as at the Institute for Nuclear Physics at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory. Later the same year, he was appointed managing editor of the Astrophysical Journal, a position he held until 1971. He transformed the journal from a private publication of the University of Chicago to the national journal of the American Astronomical Society. The price he paid for his editorial impartiality, however, was isolation from the astrophysical community.

Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953. Despite receiving numerous offers from other universities, in the United States and overseas, Chandra never left the University of Chicago, although, owing to a disagreement with Bengt Strömgren, the head of Yerkes, he stopped teaching astrophysics and astronomy and began lecturing in mathematical physics at the University of Chicago campus. Chandra voluntarily retired from the University of Chicago in 1980, although he remained on as a post-retirement researcher. In 1983, he published a classic work on the mathematical theory of black holes. Afterwards, he studied colliding waves and the Newtonian two-center problem in the framework of the general theory of relativity. His semi-retirement also left him with more time to pursue his hobbies and interests: literature and music, particularly orchestral, chamber, and South Indian.

During his long career, Chandrasekhar received many awards. In 1947, Cambridge University awarded him its Adams Prize. In 1952, he received the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the following year, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1955, Chandrasekhar became a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. The Royal Society of London bestowed upon him its Royal Medal seven years later. In 1962, he was also presented with the Srinivasa Ramanujan Medal of the Indian National Science Academy. The National Medal of Science of the United States was conferred upon Chandra in 1966; and the Padma Vibhushan Medal of India in 1968. Chandra received the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1971 and the Smoluchowski Medal of the Polish Physical Society in 1973. The American Physical Society gave him its Dannie Heineman Prize in 1974. The crowning glory of his carer came nine years later when the Royal Swedish Academy awarded Chandrasekhar the Nobel Prize for Physics. ETH of Zurich gave the Indian astrophysicist its Dr. Tomalla Prize in 1984, while the Royal Society of London presented him with its Copley Prize later that year. Chandra also received the R. D. Birla Memorial Award of the Indian Physics Association in 1984. In 1985, the Vainu Bappu Memorial Award of the Indian National Science Academy was conferred upon Chandrasekhar. In May 1993, Chandra received the state of Illinois's highest honor, Lincoln Academy Award, for his outstanding contributions to science.

While his contribution to astrophysics was immense, Chandra always preferred to remain outside the mainstream of research. He died on August 21, 1995, at the age of 82 in Chicago. The respected physicist once described himself to his biographer, Kameshar C. Wali, as "a lonely wanderer in the byways of science." Throughout his life, Chandra strove to acquire knowledge and understanding, according to an autobiographical essay published with his Nobel lecture, motivated "principally by a quest after perspectives."

Further Reading

The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, Astronomers, Blond Educational Company (London), 1984, pp. 36.

Chambers Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists, Facts-on-File, 1981.

Goldsmith, Donald, The Astronomers, St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Great American Scientists, Prentice-Hall, 1960.

Land, Kenneth R. and Owen Gingerich, editors, A Sourcebook in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Harvard University Press, 1979.

Modern Men of Science, McGraw-Hill, 1966, p. 97.

Wali, Kameshwar C., Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar, Chicago University Press, 1991.

For other persons of the same name, see Chandrasekhar.

In this Indian name, the name "Subrahmanyan" is a patronymic, not a family name, and the person should be referred to by the given name, "Chandrasekhar".

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Born	October 19, 1910(1910-10-19) Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Died	August 21, 1995 (aged 84) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Nationality	British India (1910–1947) India (1947–1953) United States (1953–1995)
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	University of Chicago University of Cambridge
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge Presidency College, Madras
Doctoral advisor	R.H. Fowler
Doctoral students	Donald Edward Osterbrock, Yavuz Nutku, Roland Winston
Known for	Chandrasekhar limit
Notable awards	Nobel Prize, Physics (1983) Copley Medal (1984) National Medal of Science (1966) Padma Vibhushan (1968)
Religious stance	None, atheist [1]

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, FRS (Tamil: சுப்பிரமணியன் சந்திரசேகர்), English: /ˌtʃʌndrəˈʃeɪkɑr/)^[2] (October 19, 1910 – August 21, 1995)^[3] was an Indian American astrophysicist. He was a Nobel laureate in physics along with William Alfred Fowler for their work in the theoretical structure and evolution of stars.^[1] He was the nephew of Indian Nobel Laureate Sir C. V. Raman.

Chandrasekhar served on the University of Chicago faculty from 1937 until his death in 1995 at the age of 84. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1953.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Career 3 Nobel prize 4 Legacy 5 Awards 6 Bibliography 7 Notes 8 External links

Biography

Chandrasekhar was born in Lahore, Pakistan into a Tamil Hindu family, the third of ten children to Sita Balakrishnan, and Subrahmanya Iyer, also known as C.S. Iyer, a senior officer in the Indian Audits and Accounts Department.^[4] The name Chandrasekhar is one of the appellations of Shiva, meaning "holder of the moon" in Sanskrit, and is a common Hindu name. Subrahmanya was posted in Lahore as the Deputy Auditor General of the Northwestern Railways at the time of Chandra's birth. His mother tongue was Tamil.

Chandra's father was also an accomplished Carnatic music violinist who had authored several books on musicology. His mother was devoted to intellectual pursuits and had translated Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House into Tamil. She is credited with arousing Chandra's intellectual curiosity early on. Chandra's father's brother, physicist C. V. Raman was a Nobel laureate in physics.

Chandra was tutored at home initially through middle school and later attended the Hindu High School, Triplicane, Madras, British India during the years 1922-25. Subsequently, he studied at Presidency College, Chennai from 1925 to 1930, obtaining his bachelor's degree, B.A. (Hon.), in physics in June 1930. In July 1930, Chandrasekhar was awarded a Government of India scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, where he was admitted to Trinity College and became a research student of Professor R. H. Fowler. On the advice of Prof. P. A. M. Dirac, as part of his graduate studies, Chandra spent a year at the Institut for Teoretisk Fysik in Copenhagen, where he met Prof. Niels Bohr.

In the summer of 1933, Chandrasekhar was awarded his Ph.D. degree at Cambridge, and the following October, he was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College for the period 1933-37. During this time, he made acquaintances with Sir Arthur Eddington and Professor E. A. Milne.

In September 1936, Chandrasekhar married Lalitha Doraiswamy, who he had met as a fellow student at Presidency College, Madras, and who was a year junior to him. In his Nobel autobiography, Chandrasekhar wrote, "Lalitha's patient understanding, support, and encouragement have been the central facts of my life."

Career

The following year in January 1937, Chandrasekhar was recruited to the University of Chicago faculty as Assistant Professor by Dr. Otto Struve and President Robert Maynard Hutchins. He was to remain at the university for his entire career, becoming Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1952 and attaining emeritus status in 1985.

Chandrasekhar did some work at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, which was run by the University of Chicago. After the Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research (LASR) was built by NASA in 1966 at the University, Chandrasekhar occupied one of the four corner offices on the second floor. (The other corners housed John A. Simpson, Peter Meyer, and Eugene N. Parker.) Chandrasekhar lived at 4800 Lake Shore Drive, about a mile from the University, after the high-rise apartment complex was built in the late 1960s.

During World War II, Chandrasekhar worked at the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. While there, he worked on problems of ballistics; for example, two reports from 1943 were titled, On the decay of plane shock waves and The normal reflection of a blast wave.^[5]

Chandrasekhar developed a style of working continuously in one specific area of physics 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 mathematical theory of black holes, and, finally, during the late 80s, he worked on the theory of colliding gravitational waves.^[5]

From 1952 to 1971 Chandrasekhar was editor of the Astrophysical Journal.

During the years 1990 to 1995, Chandrasekhar worked on a project devoted to explaining the detailed geometric arguments in Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae 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. Chandrasekhar was an honorary member of the International Academy of Science.

Chandrasekhar died of heart failure in Chicago in 1995, and was survived by his wife, Lalitha Chandrasekhar. In the Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society of London, R. J. Tayler wrote: "Chandrasekhar was a classical applied mathematician whose research was primarily applied in astronomy and whose like will probably never be seen again."^[6]

Nobel prize

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his studies on the physical processes important to the structure and evolution of stars. Chandrasekhar accepted this honor, but was upset that the citation mentioned only his earliest work, seeing it as a denigration of a lifetime's achievement.

Legacy

Chandrasekhar's most famous success was the astrophysical Chandrasekhar limit. The limit describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf star, ~1.44 solar masses, or equivalently, the minimum mass, above which a star will ultimately collapse into a neutron star or black hole (following a supernova). The limit was first calculated by Chandrasekhar in 1930 during his maiden voyage from India to Cambridge, England for his graduate studies.

When Chandra first proposed this limit during his fellowship at Trinity College in the 1930s, it was opposed by Arthur Eddington and much to Chandra's frustration none of the established physicists in Europe came to his rescue. This episode had a bitter impact on Chandra resulting in his move to the University of Chicago in the United States and in his choice of moving to another research topic. Chandra, however, compiled all his work on the topic of stellar structures into a book for posterity. This also subsequently led to his style of working continuously in one specific area of physics for a number of years and at the end of that period compiling a book on that topic. As a result, Chandra has left us with great expositions on different topics.

In 1999, NASA named the third of its four "Great Observatories'" after Chandrasekhar. This followed a naming contest which attracted 6,000 entries from fifty states and sixty-one countries. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999.

The Chandrasekhar number, an important dimensionless number of magnetohydrodynamics, is named after him.

The asteroid 1958 Chandra is also named after Chandrasekhar.

Chandrasekhar was the mathematics professor of the renowned American astronomer Carl Sagan at the University of Chicago. In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan wrote, "I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar."

Awards

• Fellow of the Royal Society (1944)
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1949)
• Bruce Medal (1952)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1953)
• National Medal of Science, USA (1967)
• Padma Vibhushan (1968)
• Henry Draper Medal (1971)
• Nobel Prize in Physics (1983)
• Copley Medal of the Royal Society (1984)
• Honorary Fellow of the International Academy of Science (1988)

Bibliography

Books by Chandrasekhar 

• Chandrasekhar, S. (1958) [1939]. An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. New York: Dover. ISBN 0486604136. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (2005) [1942]. Principles of Stellar Dynamics. New York: Dover. ISBN 048644273X. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1960) [1950]. Radiative Transfer. New York: Dover. ISBN 0486605906. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1975) [1960]. Plasma Physics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226100847. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1981) [1961]. Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability. New York: Dover. ISBN 048664071X. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1987) [1969]. Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium. New York: Dover. ISBN 0486652580. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1998) [1983]. The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198503709. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1990) [1987]. Truth and Beauty. Aesthetics and Motivations in Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226100871. 
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1995). Newton's Principia for the Common Reader. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198517440. 

Books about Chandrasekhar

• Miller, Arthur I. (2005). Empire of the Stars: Friendship, Obsession, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 061834151X. 
• Srinivasan, G. (ed.) (1997). From White Dwarfs to Black Holes: The Legacy of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226769968. 
• Wali, Kameshwar C. (1991). Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226870545. 
• Wali, Kameshwar C. (ed.) (1997). Chandrasekhar: The Man Behind the Legend - Chandra Remembered. London: imperial College Press. ISBN 1860940382. 
• Wignesan, T. (ed.) (2004). The Man who Dwarfed the Stars. Asianists' Asia. ISBN 1298-0358. 

Notes

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

1. ^ ^{a b} Vishveshwara, S. (25 April 2000). "Leaves from an unwritten diary: S. Chandrasekhar, Reminiscences and Reflections" (.PDF). Current Science 78 (8): 1025–1033. http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr252000/generalia.pdf. Retrieved 2008-02-27. 
2. ^

   In this Indian name, the name "Subrahmanyam" is a patronymic, not a family name, and the person should be referred to by the given name, "Chandrasekhar".

3. ^ Bio-Chandrasekhar
4. ^ Chandrasekhar, S. 1983. Autobiography Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden.
5. ^ ^{a b} Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Biography. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. February 2005.
6. ^ Tayler, R. J. (November 1996). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. 19 October 1910-21 August 1995" (^{[dead link]} – ^{Scholar search}). Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (London: Royal Society) 42: 81–94. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1996.0006. http://www.jstor.org/view/00804606/ap030044/03a00060/0. 

"Chandrasekhar and his Limit" by G. Venkataraman, University Press, India.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

• National Academy of Sciences biography
• Harvard's site on Chandrasekhar
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
• Subramaniam Chandrashekhar
• Bruce Medal page
• Awarding of Bruce Medal: PASP 64 (1952) 55
• Oral History interview transcript with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 17 May 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives

Obituaries

• BAAS 28 (1996) 1448
• Obs 116 (1996) 121 comment
• PASP 109 (1997) 73
• QJRAS 37 (1996) 261

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Physics Burton Richter / Samuel C. C. Ting (1976) · Philip Anderson / Nevill Mott / John van Vleck (1977) · Pyotr Kapitsa / Arno Penzias / Robert Wilson (1978) · Sheldon Glashow / Abdus Salam / Steven Weinberg (1979) · James Cronin / Val Fitch (1980) · Nicolaas Bloembergen / Arthur Schawlow / Kai Siegbahn (1981) · Kenneth G. Wilson (1982) · Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar / William Fowler (1983) · Carlo Rubbia / Simon van der Meer (1984) · Klaus von Klitzing (1985) · Ernst Ruska / Gerd Binnig / Heinrich Rohrer (1986) · Johannes Bednorz / Karl Müller (1987) · Leon M. Lederman / Melvin Schwartz / Jack Steinberger (1988) · Norman Ramsey / Hans Dehmelt / Wolfgang Paul (1989) · Jerome Friedman / Henry Kendall / Richard E. Taylor (1990) · Pierre de Gennes (1991) · Georges Charpak (1992) · Russell Hulse / Joseph Taylor (1993) · Bertram Brockhouse / Clifford Shull (1994) · Martin Perl / Frederick Reines (1995) · D. Lee / Douglas D. Osheroff / Robert Richardson (1996) · Steven Chu / Claude Cohen-Tannoudji / William Phillips (1997) · Robert B. Laughlin / Horst Störmer / Daniel C. Tsui (1998) · Gerardus 't Hooft / Martinus J. G. Veltman (1999) · Zhores Alferov / Herbert Kroemer / Jack Kilby (2000) Complete roster | (1901–1925) | (1926–1950) | (1951–1975) | (1976–2000) | (2001–present)

Persondata
NAME	Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	19 October1910
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lahore, (British India), now Pakistan.
DATE OF DEATH	21 August1995
PLACE OF DEATH	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)