Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan

(1910– ) astrophysicist; born in Lahore, India (now Pakistan). As a fellow at Trinity, Cambridge University (1933–37), he developed his theory of white dwarfs, "collapsed" stars of enormous density, such that their mass does not exceed 1.4 times the mass of the sun (the Chandrasekhar limit). Since such a small, dense body allows no radiation to escape, Chandrasekhar's theory predicted the existence of what are now known as "black holes." When his ideas were publicly derided by the respected English physicist Arthur Eddington, the distraught Chandrasekhar emigrated to the University of Chicago (1937), and remained there until his retirement (1980). His theory was vindicated, and he continued his research on relativistic astrophysics, winning the 1983 Nobel Prize for his contribution to knowledge of evolution of the stars.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan

Born Oct. 19, 1910, in Lahore, India (now in Pakistan). American physicist and astrophysicist.

Chandrasekhar graduated from the University of Madras in 1930. He received a Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1933 and taught at Cambridge until 1936. He moved to the USA in 1936, becoming an American citizen in 1953. In 1937 he joined the staff of Yerkes Observatory and the faculty of the University of Chicago; he became a professor at the university in 1942.

Chandrasekhar’s main works deal with stellar structure, stellar atmospheres, and the dynamics of stellar atmospheres, as well as with mathematical physics, in particular, the theory of stochastic processes. Chandrasekhar developed a theory of white dwarfs that predicts the existence of a mass limit for white dwarfs, which is known as Chandrasekhar’s limit, and gives a universal relationship between the mass and the radius of a star; the relationship specifies the final stages of stellar evolution. Chandrasekhar also studied the dynamics of stellar systems and radiative transfer in plane-parallel stellar atmospheres. He examined problems of hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability in the framework of the general theory of relativity.

Chandrasekhar became a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1944 and is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Stokhasticheskieproblemy v fizike i astronomii. Moscow, 1947.
Printsipy zvezdnoi dinamiki. Moscow, 1948.
Vvedenie v uchenie o stroenii zvezd. Moscow, 1950.
Perenos luchistoi energii. Moscow, 1953.
Ellipsoidal’nye figury ravnovesiia. Moscow, 1973.

O. V. KUZNETSOVA

Mentioned in

Chandra X-Ray Observatory

References in periodicals archive

The instrument, named after the late Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (SN: 1/18/97, p.

Keen-sighted X-ray telescope debuts

In 1975, when the late Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar wrote those words, the idea of black holes required a stretch of the imagination.

Galactic and stellar black holes get real

The third of NASA's four Great Observatories, Chandra (pronounced CHAN-drah) is named after the late Indian-American physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who studied energetic cosmic exotica that are some of his namesake's favorite targets: white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes.

Chandra: taking the universe's X-ray: with its sharp resolution, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is providing detailed views of the high-energy cosmos

In 1931, the late Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar predicted that stars with more than about 1.4 times the sun's mass would, on running out of nuclear fuel, collapse under their own gravity.

The stability of matter: why matter neither collapses nor explodes

Nobel-prize-winning astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar of the University of Chicago says he compared his own proofs of Newton's propositions with those of Newton's and was "astonished at the originality, the careful arrangement, elegance and astonishing lightness" of Newton's proofs.

Celebrating Newton: the legacy and legend of Isaac Newton live on 300 years after the publication of his masterpiece, the Principia

Finally, I gaped at the disrespectful treatment a young Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar received about his ideas on stellar collapse from the great (but wrong) Arthur Eddington (joined by Edward Milne), who declares, "I think there should be a law of Nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way!"

Meeting astronomy's great minds

As the late physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar deduced purely from atomic theory, it works only for stars having less than 1.4 solar masses.

Anatomy of a supernova

The Chandra satellite is named for Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-95), the originator of the theory of white-dwarf physics.--A.

Collecting Sirius binaries

This book is a collection of 11 essays about the scientific contributions of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, astrophysicist of the 20th century.

The Seminal Astrophysicist

AXAF will now be known as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, or CXO, after the late India-born astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

AXAF Changes to CXO

He sat through lectures given by the likes of astrophysicists Bengt Stromgren and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. "Enrico Fermi would sit in on some of those classes," Crawford reminisces, his eyes brimming with enthusiasm at the quality of his mentors.

Protector of the night sky