Biography: Subramaniam Chandrashekhar

Subrah Chandrasekhar, known to the world as Chandra was born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, India. Subrah was nephew to Nobel-prize winning physicist C.V. Raman. He received most of his school education by private tuiton and graduated from Presidency College Chennai in 1930 with a degree in physics. In July after he graduated, 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 way to England Chandrasekhar discovered his biggest astronomical success the astrophysical Chandrasekhar limit. The limit describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf star, or the minimum mass above which a star will ultimately collapse into a neutron star or black hole. When Chandra first proposed this limit during his fellowship at Trinity college in the 1930's, it was obstinately 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. 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. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar tragically died of heart failure in Chicago in 1995. In 1999, NASA named the third of its four "Great Observatories'" after Chandrasekhar. The Chandrasekhar number, an important dimensionless number of magnetohydrodynamics, is named after him, as well as the asteroid 1958 Chandra.
Works Cited
Wali, Kameshwar C. (1991). Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wali, Kameshwar C. (ed.) (1997). Chandrasekhar: The Man Behind the Legend - Chandra Remembered. London: imperial College Press.
"The Man Behind the Name." Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. 29 Aug. 2006. Harvard U. 8 May 2008 .