Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Indian-American astrophysicist

Born: October 19, 1910 · Died: August 21, 1995

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Who was Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar?

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian-American astrophysicist. Born in the late British Raj, Chandrasekhar worked on a wide variety of problems in physics during his lifetime, contributing to the contemporary understanding of stellar structure, white dwarfs, stellar dynamics, stochastic process, radiative transfer, the quantum theory of the hydrogen anion, hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability, turbulence, equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, general relativity, mathematical theory of black holes and theory of colliding gravitational waves. The Chandrasekhar limit describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf (1.44 solar masses). Above it, a stellar remnant will collapse to form a neutron star or black hole. Many concepts, institutions and inventions, including the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, are named after him. The Chandrasekhar limit describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf.

Historical significance

He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars." His mathematical treatment of stellar evolution yielded many of the current theoretical models of the later evolutionary stages of massive stars.

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