Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar FRS
Born	(1910-10-19)19 October 1910 Lahore, Punjab, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan)
Died	21 August 1995(1995-08-21) (aged 84) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Citizenship	British India (1910–1947) India (1947–1953) United States (1953–1995)
Alma mater	University of Madras (BSc) Trinity College, Cambridge (MSc, PhD)
Known for	Chandrasekhar limit Chandrasekhar number Chandrasekhar friction Chandrasekhar–Kendall function Chandrasekhar's H-function Emden–Chandrasekhar equation Chandrasekhar–Fermi method Chandrasekhar–Friedman–Schutz instability Chandrasekhar transformation Chandrasekhar–Page equations Kramers–Chandrasekhar equation Chandrasekhar tensor Chandrasekhar virial equations Batchelor–Chandrasekhar equation Schönberg–Chandrasekhar limit Chandrasekhar's white dwarf equation Chandrasekhar polarization Chandrasekhar's X- and Y-function Discrete Ordinates Method Others in list form
Spouse	Lalitha Doraiswamy ​ (m. 1936)​
Family	Chandrasekhar family
Awards	FRS (1944)[1] Adams Prize (1948) Nobel Prize in Physics (1983) Copley Medal (1984) National Medal of Science (1966) Royal Medal (1962) Padma Vibhushan (1968) Heineman Prize (1974) Marcel Grossman Award (1994)
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics General relativity Fluid dynamics Radiation Quantum theory
Institutions	University of Chicago Yerkes Observatory Ballistic Research Laboratory University of Cambridge
Thesis	Polytropic distributions  (1933)
Doctoral advisor	Ralph H. Fowler Arthur Eddington
Doctoral students	Donald Edward Osterbrock Guido Münch Roland Winston Jeremiah P. Ostriker Jerome Kristian Yousef Sobouti Anne Barbara Underhill Arthur Code Surindar Kumar Trehan[2]
Signature

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (/ˌtʃəndrəˈʃeɪkər/;^[3] 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995)^[4] was an Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution and black holes. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics along with William A. Fowler for 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 and black holes.^[5][6] Many concepts, institutions and inventions, including the Chandrasekhar limit and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, are named after him.^[7]

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.^[8] At the University of Cambridge, he developed a theoretical model explaining the structure of white dwarf stars that took into account the relativistic variation of mass with the velocities of electrons that comprise their degenerate matter. He showed that the mass of a white dwarf could not exceed 1.44 times that of the Sun – the Chandrasekhar limit. Chandrasekhar revised the models of stellar dynamics first outlined by Jan Oort and others by considering the effects of fluctuating gravitational fields within the Milky Way on stars rotating about the galactic centre. His solution to this complex dynamical problem involved a set of twenty partial differential equations, describing a new quantity he termed "dynamical friction", which has the dual effects of decelerating the star and helping to stabilize clusters of stars. Chandrasekhar extended this analysis to the interstellar medium, showing that clouds of galactic gas and dust are distributed very unevenly.

Chandrasekhar studied at Presidency College, Madras (now Chennai) and the University of Cambridge. A long-time professor at the University of Chicago, he did some of his studies at the Yerkes Observatory, and served as editor of The Astrophysical Journal from 1952 to 1971. He was on the faculty at Chicago from 1937 until his death in 1995 at the age of 84, and was the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics.^[9]

Early life and education

Subrahmanyan was born in Lahore on 19 October 1910 of the British Raj (present-day Pakistan) in a Tamil family,^[10] to Sita Balakrishnan (1891–1931) and Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya Ayyar (1885–1960)^[11] who was stationed in Lahore as Deputy Auditor General of the Northwestern Railways at the time of Chandrasekhar's birth. He had two elder sisters, Rajalakshmi and Balaparvathi, three younger brothers, Vishwanathan, Balakrishnan, and Ramanathan, and four younger sisters, Sarada, Vidya, Savitri, and Sundari. His paternal uncle was the Indian physicist and Nobel laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. His mother was devoted to intellectual pursuits, had translated Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House into Tamil and is credited with arousing Chandra's intellectual curiosity at an early age.^[12] The family moved from Lahore to Allahabad in 1916, and finally settled in Madras in 1918.

Chandrasekhar was tutored at home until the age of 12.^[12] In middle school his father taught him mathematics and physics and his mother taught him Tamil. He later attended the Hindu High School, Triplicane, Madras during the years 1922–25. Subsequently, he studied at Presidency College, Madras (affiliated to the University of Madras) from 1925 to 1930, writing his first paper, "The Compton Scattering and the New Statistics", in 1929 after being inspired by a lecture by Arnold Sommerfeld.^[13] He obtained his bachelor's degree, BSc (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, secured by R. H. Fowler with whom he communicated his first paper. During his travels to England, Chandrasekhar spent his time working out the statistical mechanics of the degenerate electron gas in white dwarf stars, providing relativistic corrections to Fowler's previous work (see Legacy below).

University of Cambridge

In his first year at Cambridge, as a research student of Fowler, Chandrasekhar spent his time calculating mean opacities and applying his results to the construction of an improved model for the limiting mass of the degenerate star. At the meetings of the Royal Astronomical Society, he met E. A. Milne. At the invitation of Max Born he spent the summer of 1931, his second year of post-graduate studies, at Born's institute at Göttingen, working on opacities, atomic absorption coefficients, and model stellar photospheres. On the advice of P. A. M. Dirac, he spent his final year of graduate studies at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, where he met Niels Bohr.

After receiving a bronze medal for his work on degenerate stars, in the summer of 1933, Chandrasekhar was awarded his PhD degree at Cambridge with a thesis among his four papers on rotating self-gravitating polytropes. On 9 October, he was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College for the period 1933–1937, becoming only the second Indian to receive a Trinity Fellowship after Srinivasa Ramanujan 16 years earlier. He had been so certain of failing to obtain the fellowship that he had already made arrangements to study under Milne that autumn at Oxford, even going to the extent of renting a flat there.^[13]

During this time, Chandrasekhar became acquainted with British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington. Eddington took an interest in his work, but in January, 1935, gave a talk severely criticizing Chandrasekhar's work (see #Dispute with Eddington and Chandrasekhar–Eddington dispute).

Career and research

Early career

In 1935, Chandrasekhar was invited by the director of the Harvard Observatory, Harlow Shapley, to be a visiting lecturer in theoretical astrophysics for a three-month period. He travelled to the United States in December. During his visit to Harvard, Chandrasekhar greatly impressed Shapley, but declined his offer of a Harvard research fellowship. At the same time, Chandrasekhar met Gerard Kuiper, a noted Dutch astrophysical observationalist who was then a leading authority on white dwarfs. Kuiper had recently been recruited by Otto Struve, the director of the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, which was run by the University of Chicago, and the university's president, Robert Maynard Hutchins. Having known of Chandrasekhar, Struve was then considering him for one of three faculty posts in astrophysics, along with Kuiper; the other opening had been filled by Bengt Stromgren, a Danish theorist.^[13] Following a recommendation from Kuiper, Struve invited Chandrasekhar to Yerkes in March 1936 and offered him the job. Though Chandrasekhar was keenly interested, he initially declined the offer and left for England; after Hutchins sent a radiogram to Chandrasekhar during the voyage, he finally accepted, returning to Yerkes as an assistant professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in December 1936.^[13] Hutchins also intervened on an occasion where Chandra's participation on teaching a course organised by Struve, was vetoed by the dean Henry Gale based on a racial prejudice; Hutchins said "By all means have Mr. Chandrasekhar teach".^[14]

Chandrasekhar remained at the University of Chicago for his entire career. He was promoted to associate professor in 1941 and to full professor two years later at the age of 33.^[13] In 1946, when Princeton University offered Chandrasekhar a position vacated by Henry Norris Russell with a salary double that of Chicago's, Hutchins incremented his salary matching with that of Princeton's and persuaded Chandrasekhar to stay in Chicago. In 1952, he became Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics and Enrico Fermi Institute, upon Enrico Fermi's invitation. In 1953, he and his wife, Lalitha Chandrasekhar, took American citizenship.^[15]

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 after the high-rise apartment complex was built in the late 1960s, and later at 5550 Dorchester Building.

Dispute with Eddington

Main article: Chandrasekhar–Eddington dispute

After graduating from Cambridge, Chandrasekhar, who was in close contact with Arthur Eddington, presented a full solution to his stellar equation at the Royal Astronomical Society meeting in 1935. Eddington booked a talk right after Chandrasekhar, where he openly criticized Chandrasekhar's theory. This depressed Chandrasekhar and sparked a scientific dispute. Eddington refused to accept a limit for the mass of a star and was proposing an alternative model.^[16]

Chandrasekhar sought support from prominent physicists like Léon Rosenfeld, Niels Bohr and Christian Møller who found Eddington's arguments lacking. The tension persisted through 1930s, as Eddington continued to openly criticize Chandrasekhar during meetings and the two compared each other's theories in publications. Chandrasekhar ultimately completed his theory of white dwarfs in 1939, receiving praise from others in the field. Eddington died in 1944, and despite their disagreements, Chandrasekhar continued to state that he admired Eddington and considered him a friend.^[16]

World War II

During World War II, Chandrasekhar worked at the Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. While there, he worked on problems of ballistics, resulting in reports such as 1943's On the decay of plane shock waves, Optimum height for the bursting of a 105mm shell, On the Conditions for the Existence of Three Shock Waves,^[17] On the Determination of the Velocity of a Projectile from the Beat Waves Produced by Interference with the Waves of Modified Frequency Reflected from the Projectile^[18] and The normal reflection of a blast wave.^[19][8] Chandrasekhar's expertise in hydrodynamics led Robert Oppenheimer to invite him to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, but delays in the processing of his security clearance prevented him from contributing to the project. It has been rumoured that he visited the Calutron project.

Philosophy of systematization

He wrote that his scientific research was motivated by his desire to participate in the progress of different subjects in science to the best of his ability, and that the prime motive underlying his work was systematization. "What a scientist tries to do essentially is to select a certain domain, a certain aspect, or a certain detail, and see if that takes its appropriate place in a general scheme which has form and coherence; and, if not, to seek further information which would help him to do that".^[20]

Chandrasekhar developed a unique style of mastering several fields of physics and astrophysics; consequently, his working life can be divided into distinct periods. He would exhaustively study a specific area, publish several papers in it and then write a book summarizing the major concepts in the field. He would then move on to another field for the next decade and repeat the pattern. Thus he studied stellar structure, including the theory of white dwarfs, during the years 1929 to 1939, and subsequently focused on stellar dynamics, theory of Brownian motion 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 turbulence and hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability from 1950 to 1961. In the 1960s, he studied both the equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, and 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.^[8]

Work with students

Chandra worked closely with his students and expressed pride in the fact that over a 50-year period (from roughly 1930 to 1980), the average age of his co-author collaborators had remained the same, at around 30. He insisted that students address him as "Prof. Chandrasekhar" until they received their PhD degree, after which time they (as other colleagues) were encouraged to address him as "Chandra". When Chandrasekhar was working at the Yerkes Observatory in 1940s, he would drive 150 miles (240 km) to and from every weekend to teach a course at the University of Chicago. Two of the students who took the course, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, won the Nobel prize before he could get one for himself. Regarding classroom interactions during his lectures, noted astrophysicist Carl Sagan stated from firsthand experience that "frivolous questions" from unprepared students were "dealt with in the manner of a summary execution", while questions of merit "were given serious attention and response".^[21]

Other activities

From 1952 to 1971 Chandrasekhar was editor of The Astrophysical Journal.^[22] When Eugene Parker submitted a paper on his discovery of solar wind in 1957, two eminent reviewers rejected the paper. However, since Chandra as an editor could not find any mathematical flaws in Parker's work, he went ahead and published the paper in 1958.^[23]

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 also worked on collision of gravitational waves,^[24] and algebraically special perturbations.^[25]

Personal life

Chandrasekhar was the nephew of C. V. Raman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.

Chandrasekhar married Lalitha Doraiswamy in September 1936. He met her as a fellow student at Presidency College. He became a naturalised citizen of the U.S. in 1953. Many considered him as warm, positive, generous, unassuming, meticulous, and open to debate, while some others as private, intimidating, impatient and stubborn regarding non-scientific matters,^[21] and unforgiving to those who ridiculed his work.^[26] Chandrasekhar was a vegetarian.^[27]

Chandrasekhar died of a heart attack at the University of Chicago Hospital in 1995, having survived a prior heart attack in 1975.^[21] He was survived by his wife, who died on 2 September 2013 at the age of 102.^[28] She was a serious student of literature and western classical music.^[26]

Once when involved in a discussion about the Bhagavad Gita, Chandrasekhar said: "I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist".^[29] This was also confirmed many times in his other talks. Kameshwar C. Wali quoted him saying: "I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist."^[30] In an interview with Kevin Krisciunas at the University of Chicago, on 6 October 1987, Chandrasekhar commented: "Of course, he (Otto Struve) knew I was an atheist, and he never brought up the subject with me".^[31]

Awards, honours and legacy

Nobel prize

Chandrasekhar was awarded half of 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 honour, but was upset the citation mentioned only his earliest work, seeing it as a denigration of a lifetime's achievement. He shared it with William A. Fowler.

Other awards and honors

• Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1944^[1]
• American Philosophical Society, Member (1945)^[32]
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member (1946)^[33]
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1949)^[34]
• Bruce Medal (1952)^[35]
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1953)^[36]
• United States National Academy of Sciences, Member (1955)^[37]
• Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957)^[38]
• National Medal of Science, USA (1966)^[39]
• Padma Vibhushan (1968)
• Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1971)^[40]
• Marian Smoluchowski Medal (1973)
• Copley Medal of the Royal Society (1984)
• Gordon J. Laing Award (1989)
• Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1990)^[41]
• Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Legacy

Chandrasekhar's most notable work is on the astrophysical Chandrasekhar limit. The limit gives the maximum mass of a white dwarf star, ~1.44 solar masses, or equivalently, the minimum mass that must be exceeded for a star to 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. In 1979, 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 23 July 1999. The Chandrasekhar number, an important dimensionless number of magnetohydrodynamics, is named after him. The asteroid 1958 Chandra is also named after Chandrasekhar. The Himalayan Chandra Telescope is named after him. In the Biographical Memoirs of 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."^[1]

Chandrasekhar supervised 45 PhD students.^[42] After his death, his wife Lalitha Chandrasekhar made a gift of his Nobel Prize money to the University of Chicago towards the establishment of the Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Memorial Fellowship. First awarded in the year 2000, this fellowship is given annually to an outstanding applicant to graduate school in the PhD programs of the department of physics or the department of astronomy and astrophysics.^[43] S. Chandrasekhar Prize of Plasma Physics is an award given by Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPS) to outstanding plasma physicists, started in the year 2014.^[44]

The Chandra Astrophysics Institute (CAI) is a program offered for high school students who are interested in astrophysics mentored by MIT scientists^[45] and sponsored by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.^[46] Carl Sagan praised him in the book The Demon-Haunted World: "I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar." On 19 October 2017, Google showed a Google Doodle in 28 countries honouring Chandrasekhar's 107th birthday and the Chandrasekhar limit.^[47][48]

In 2010, on account of Chandra's 100th birthday, University of Chicago conducted a symposium titled Chandrasekhar Centennial Symposium 2010 which was attended by leading astrophysicists such as Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, Freeman Dyson, Jayant V. Narlikar, Rashid Sunyaev, G. Srinivasan, and Clifford Will. Its research talks were published in 2011 as a book titled Fluid flows to Black Holes: A tribute to S Chandrasekhar on his birth centenary.^[49][50][51]

Publications

Books

• Chandrasekhar, S. (1958) [1939]. An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-60413-8.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (2005) [1942]. Principles of Stellar Dynamics. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-44273-0.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1960) [1950]. Radiative Transfer. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-60590-6.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1975) [1960]. Plasma Physics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-10084-5.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1981) [1961]. Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-64071-6.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1987) [1969]. Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-65258-0.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1998) [1983]. The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850370-5.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1983) [1983]. Eddington: The Most Distinguished Astrophysicist of His Time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521257466.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1990) [1987]. Truth and Beauty. Aesthetics and Motivations in Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-10087-6.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1995). Newton's Principia for the Common Reader. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-851744-3.
• Spiegel, E.A. (2011) [1954]. The Theory of Turbulence : Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's 1954 Lectures. Netherlands: Springer. ISBN 978-94-007-0117-5.

Notes

• Chandrasekhar, S. (1939). "The Dynamics of Stellar Systems. I–VIII". The Astrophysical Journal. 90 (1): 1–154. Bibcode:1939ApJ....90....1C. doi:10.1086/144094. ISSN 0004-637X.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1943). "Stochastic Problems in Physics and Astronomy". Reviews of Modern Physics. 15 (1): 1–89. Bibcode:1943RvMP...15....1C. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.15.1. ISSN 0034-6861.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1993). Classical general relativity. Royal Society.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1979). The Role of General Relativity: Retrospect and Prospect. Proc. IAU Meeting.^[52]
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1943). New methods in stellar dynamics. New York Academy of Sciences.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1954). "The illumination and polarization of the sunlit sky on Rayleigh scattering". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 44 (6). American Philosophical Society: 643–728. doi:10.2307/1005777. JSTOR 1005777.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1983). "On Stars, their evolution and their stability, Nobel lecture". Reviews of Modern Physics. 56 (2). Stockholm: Nobel Foundation: 137–147. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.56.137.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1981). New horizons of human knowledge: a series of public talks given at Unesco. Unesco Press.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1975). "Shakespeare, Newton, and Beethoven: Or, Patterns of Creativity". Current Science. 70 (9). University of Chicago: 810–822. JSTOR 24099932.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (July 1973). "P.A.M. Dirac on his seventieth birthday". Contemporary Physics. 14 (4): 389–394. Bibcode:1973ConPh..14..389C. doi:10.1080/00107517308210761. ISSN 0010-7514.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1947). Heywood, Robert B. (ed.). The Works of the Mind:The Scientist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 159–179. OCLC 752682744.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1995). Reminiscences and discoveries on Ramanujan's bust. Royal Society. ASIN B001B12NJ8.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1990). How one may explore the physical content of the general theory of relativity. American Mathematical Society. ASIN B001B10QTM.

Journals

Chandrasekhar published around 380 papers^[53][1] in his lifetime. He wrote his first paper in 1928 when he was still an undergraduate student about Compton effect^[54] and last paper which was accepted for publication just two months before his death was in 1995 which was about non-radial oscillation of stars.^[55] The University of Chicago Press published selected papers of Chandrasekhar in seven volumes.

• Chandrasekhar, S. (1989). Selected Papers, Vol 1, Stellar structure and stellar atmospheres. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226100890.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1989). Selected Papers, Vol 2, Radiative transfer and negative ion of hydrogen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226100920.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1989). Selected Papers, Vol 3, Stochastic, statistical and hydromagnetic problems in Physics and Astronomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226100944.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1989). Selected Papers, Vol 4, Plasma Physics, Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic stability, and applications of the Tensor-Virial theorem. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226100975.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1990). Selected Papers, Vol 5, Relativistic Astrophysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226100982.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1991). Selected Papers, Vol 6, The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and of Colliding Plane Waves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226101019.
• Chandrasekhar, S. (1997). Selected Papers, Vol 7, The non-radial oscillations of star in General Relativity and other writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226101040.

Books and articles about Chandrasekhar

• Miller, Arthur I. (2005). Empire of the Stars: Friendship, Obsession, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-34151-1.
• Srinivasan, G., ed. (1997). From White Dwarfs to Black Holes: The Legacy of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-76996-7.
• Penrose, Roger (1996). "Chandrasekhar, Black Holes and Singularities" (PDF). Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy. 17 (3–4): 213–231. Bibcode:1996JApA...17..213P. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.496.2529. doi:10.1007/BF02702305. ISSN 0250-6335. S2CID 119807977. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 July 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
• Parker, E. (1996). "S. Chandrasekhar and Magnetohydrodynamics". Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy. 17 (3–4): 147–166. Bibcode:1996JApA...17..147P. doi:10.1007/BF02702301. ISSN 0250-6335. S2CID 122374065.
• Wali, Kameshwar C. (1991). Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-87054-0.
• Wali, Kameshwar C., ed. (1997). Chandrasekhar: The Man Behind the Legend – Chandra Remembered. London: imperial College Press. ISBN 978-1-86094-038-5.
• Wali, Kameshwar C., ed. (2001). A Quest For Perspectives. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Ptd Ltd. ISBN 978-1-86094-201-3.
• Wali, Kameshwar C., ed. (2020). S Chandrasekhar: Selected Correspondence and Conversations. World Scientific Publishing Co. Ptd Ltd. ISBN 978-9811208324.
• Wignesan, T., ed. (2004). "The Man who Dwarfed the Stars". The Asianists' Asia. ISSN 1298-0358.
• Venkataraman, G. (1992). Chandrasekhar and His Limit. Hyderabad, India: Universities Press. ISBN 978-81-7371-035-3.
• Saikia, D J.; et al., eds. (2011). Fluid flows to Black Holes: A tribute to S Chandrasekhar on his birth centenary. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Ptd Ltd. ISBN 978-981-4299-57-2.
• Ramnath, Radhika, ed. (2012). S. Chandrasekhar: Man of Science. Harpercollins. ASIN B00C3EWIME.
• Alic, Kameshwar C (2011). Kameshwar, C Wali (ed.). A Scientific Autobiography: S Chandrasekhar. A Scientific Autobiography: S Chandrasekhar. Edited by K C Wali. Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. Bibcode:2010sasc.book.....W. doi:10.1142/7686. ISBN 978-981-4299-57-2.
• Salwi, Dilip, ed. (2004). S. Chandrasekhar: The scholar scientist. Rupa. ISBN 978-8129104915.
• Pandey, Rakesh Kumar, ed. (2017). Chandrasekhar Limit: Size of White Dwarfs. Lap Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3330317666.

References

1. Tayler, R. J. (1996). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 42: 80–94. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1996.0006. ISSN 0080-4606. S2CID 58736242.
2. "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – The Mathematics Genealogy Project". www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Archived from the original on 4 June 2024.
3. "Great Indians: Professor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar". 26 January 2014 – via NDTV.
4. Osterbrock, Donald E. (December 1998). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995)". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 142 (4). American Philosophical Society: 658–665. ISSN 0003-049X. JSTOR 3152289. (Registration or subscription required)
5. Vishveshwara, C.V. (25 April 2000). "Leaves from an unwritten diary: S. Chandrasekhar, Reminiscences and Reflections" (PDF). Current Science. 78 (8): 1025–1033.
6. Horgan, J. (1994). "Profile: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – Confronting the Final Limit". Scientific American. 270 (3): 32–33. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0394-32. ISSN 0036-8733.
7. Sreenivasan, K. R. (2019). "Chandrasekhar's Fluid Dynamics". Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. 51 (1): 1–24. Bibcode:2019AnRFM..51....1S. doi:10.1146/annurev-fluid-010518-040537. ISSN 0066-4189.
8. O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar". Biographies. School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved 21 May 2012.
9. "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar". starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov. Retrieved 19 October 2017.
10. "Who was S Chandrasekhar?". The Indian Express. 19 October 2017. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
11. "Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Biographical". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
12. "S Chandrasekhar: Why Google honours him". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 18 October 2017.
13. Trehan, Surindar Kumar (1995). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 1910–1995" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy. 23: 101–119.
14. Biographical Memoirs. 1997. doi:10.17226/5859. ISBN 978-0-309-05788-2.
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16. Wali, Kameshwar C. (1 October 1982). "Chandrasekhar vs. Eddington—an unanticipated confrontation". Physics Today. 35 (10): 33–40. Bibcode:1982PhT....35j..33W. doi:10.1063/1.2914790. ISSN 0031-9228.
17. Chandrasekhar, S. (1943). On the conditions for the existence of three shock waves (Report). Ballistic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground. 367.
18. Chandrasekhar, S. (1943). On the Determination of the Velocity of a Projectile from the Beat Waves Produced by Interference with the Waves of Modified Frequency Reflected from the Projectile (Report). Ballistic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground. 365.
19. Chandrasekhar, S. (1943). Optimum Height for the Bursting of a 105mm Shell (PDF) (Report). Army Ballistic Research Lab Aberdeen Procing Ground MD. BRL-MR-139. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 November 2019.
20. The Works of the Mind, p.176, edited by Robert B. Heywood, University of Chicago Press, 1947.
21. C.), Wali, K. C. (Kameshwar) (1991). Chandra : a biography of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 9. ISBN 978-0226870540. OCLC 21297960.
22. Helmut A. Abt (1 December 1995). "Obituary – Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan". Astrophysical Journal. 454: 551. Bibcode:1995ApJ...454..551A. doi:10.1086/176507. ISSN 0004-637X.
23. Parker, E. N. (1 November 1958). "Dynamics of the Interplanetary Gas and Magnetic Fields". The Astrophysical Journal. 128: 664. Bibcode:1958ApJ...128..664P. doi:10.1086/146579. ISSN 0004-637X.
24. Chandrasekhar, S.; Xanthopoulos, B. C. (1985). "Some exact solutions of gravitational waves coupled with fluid motions". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 402 (1823): 205–224. Bibcode:1985RSPSA.402..205C. doi:10.1098/rspa.1985.0115. S2CID 120942390.
25. Chandrasekhar, S. (1984). "On algebraically special perturbations of black holes". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 392 (1802): 1–13. Bibcode:1984RSPSA.392....1C. doi:10.1098/rspa.1984.0021. S2CID 122585164.
26. S. Chandrasekhar : the man behind the legend. Wali, K. C. (Kameshwar C.). London: Imperial College Press. 1997. pp. 107. ISBN 978-1860940385. OCLC 38847561.
27. Sullivan, Walter (22 August 1995). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 84, Is Dead; Noble Laureate Uncovered 'White Dwarfs'". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
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Further reading

• Struve, Otto (1 April 1952). "The Award of the Bruce Gold Medal to Dr. S. Chandrasekhar". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 64 (377): 55. Bibcode:1952PASP...64...55S. doi:10.1086/126422. ISSN 0004-6280. S2CID 119668926.
• Parker, E. N. (1997). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. 1910-1995" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. 72: 28–49.

Obituaries

• Devorkin, David H. (1 January 1996). "Obituary: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 1910-1995". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 28 (4): 1448. Bibcode:1996BAAS...28.1448D.
• McCrea, W. (1 April 1996). "Obituary: Subramanyan Chandrasekhar". The Observatory. 116: 121–124. Bibcode:1996Obs...116..121M. ISSN 0029-7704.
  • Comment: Cronin, J. W. (1 February 1998). "Subramanyan Chandrasekhar". The Observatory. 118: 24. ISSN 0029-7704.
• Garstang, R. H. (1 February 1997). "Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995)". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 109: 73–77. Bibcode:1997PASP..109...73G. doi:10.1086/133864. ISSN 0004-6280. S2CID 123095503.
• Spruit, H. C. (1 March 1996). "A 'curve of growth' of astronomers on the Citation Index". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 37: 1–9. Bibcode:1996QJRAS..37....1S. ISSN 0035-8738.

External links

• Great Indians: Professor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – Video of Chandra's last interview at Chicago.
• Audio – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar(1988) The founding of general relativity and its excellence.
• Audio – Cain/Gay (2010) Astronomy Cast Chandrasekhar.
• National Academy of Sciences biography
• Harvard's site on Chandrasekhar
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
• Subramaniam Chandrashekhar
• Bruce Medal page
• Oral History interview transcript with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on 17 May 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives - Session I
• Oral History interview transcript with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on 18 May 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives - Session II
• Oral History interview transcript with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on 31 October 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives - Session III
• Oral History interview transcript for Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on 6 October 1987, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Concordia University Honorary Degree Citation, June 1988, Concordia University Records Management and Archives
• Free PDF of Radiative Transfer on Archive.org
• Guide to the Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Papers 1913-2011 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on Nobelprize.org