Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indian-American theoretical physicist. He made important discoveries about stars. He was born on 19 October 1910 and passed away on 21 August 1995. In 1983, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on how stars change over time.

Chandrasekhar studied stars, especially what happens when they end their lives. He discovered that a small, dense star called a white dwarf can only be so big. This maximum size is called the Chandrasekhar limit. It is about 1.44 times the weight of our Sun. If a white dwarf is heavier than this, it will collapse and become either a neutron star or a black hole.

He worked at many famous places, including the University of Chicago and the Yerkes Observatory. Chandrasekhar also helped edit an important science journal called The Astrophysical Journal. Many things, like the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, are named after him for his big contributions to science.

Early life and education

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born on 19 October 1910 in Lahore, which was part of the British Raj (now in Pakistan). He grew up in a Tamil Brahmin family. His mother loved learning and even translated a famous play called A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen into Tamil. This helped him love learning too.

Chandrasekhar was taught at home until he was 12. After that, he went to Hindu High School in Triplicane, Madras, and then to Presidency College, Madras. In 1930, he earned a degree in physics and won a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in England. While traveling there, he worked on important ideas about stars called white dwarf stars.

University of Cambridge

In his first year at Cambridge, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar studied important properties of stars, called mean opacities. He joined meetings of the Royal Astronomical Society, where he met E. A. Milne. He also visited Göttingen and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, meeting famous scientists like Niels Bohr.

Chandrasekhar earned his PhD in 1933 with a thesis on special types of stars called polytropes. He won a special award called a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, becoming only the second Indian to receive this honor after Srinivasa Ramanujan. During this time, he traveled to Leningrad, Russia, meeting other leading scientists.

Career and research

In 1935, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar visited the Harvard Observatory and later joined the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, as an assistant professor. He stayed at the University of Chicago for his entire career. He became a full professor in 1943 and later a distinguished service professor.

Chandrasekhar had different ideas about the maximum mass a star can have. Another scientist, Arthur Eddington, did not agree with him at first, but Chandrasekhar kept working and earned respect from other scientists. During World War II, he worked on ballistics research. He studied many areas of physics and wrote books about them. He also helped guide many students, some of whom became famous scientists themselves.

Personal life

See also: Chandrasekhar family

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was the nephew of C. V. Raman, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. In 1936, he married Lalitha Doraiswamy, a fellow physics student they met at Presidency College. She helped him by taking care of their home. He became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1953. He was known for being kind and open to talks, though some people thought he was private and firm about his ideas. He was a vegetarian.

Awards, honours and legacy

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar received many awards for his work. In 1983, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his studies on stars. He shared this prize with William A. Fowler.

Among his other honors were the Copley Medal in 1984 and the National Medal of Science in 1966.

Chandrasekhar's most famous contribution is the Chandrasekhar limit. This tells us the maximum mass a white dwarf star can have before it collapses. NASA named the Chandra X-ray Observatory after him, launched in 1999. Many other awards and medals are named in his honor. His legacy continues through fellowships and programs for students interested in physics and astronomy.

Publications

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar wrote many important books about stars, physics, and science. Some of his well-known books include An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure, The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes, and Newton's Principia for the Common Reader. These books help scientists understand how stars work and other big ideas in physics.