Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

He died in 1995 of a heart attack and was survived by his wife of many years.

Chandrasekhar was born as one of the ten children of Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya and his wife Sitalakshmi, into a Tamil family in Punjab, India. His father was working as a Deputy Auditor General of the Northwestern Railways at that time.

As the eldest of four sons, he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and get a government job. But young Chandra was more inclined towards science, inspired by his paternal uncle, Sir C. V. Raman.

He attended the Hindu High School, Madras, from 1922-25 after receiving his primary education from tutors at home. In 1925 he enrolled at Presidency College, Madras, where he remained till 1930, writing his first paper, ‘The Compton Scattering and the New Statistics’ in 1929.

In June 1930 he received his B.SC. (Hon.) in Physics following which he was awarded a Government of India scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the University of Cambridge.

It was during his time in England that he became enamored with the concept of white dwarf stars. He began his work in the statistical mechanics of the degenerate electron gas in white dwarfs.

He was appointed as Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago in January 1937 on the recommendation of Dr. Otto Struve and President Robert Maynard Hutchins.

Chandrasekhar remained at the University of Chicago for his entire career, spanning almost six decades. He was made an associate professor in 1942 and a full professor in 1944.

In 1947 he was appointed the Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics and became the professor emeritus in 1985.

He served as the editor of ‘The Astrophysical Journal’ from 1952 to 1971 and under his editorship converted the private journal into a National Journal of the American Astronomical Society.

Throughout his career he worked not just at the University of Chicago, but also later at NASA’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research which was built in 1966.

He is best known for discovering the ‘Chandrasekhar Limit’ with which he proved that there is a maximum mass which can be supported against gravity by pressure made up of electrons and nuclei. The most amazing thing about this discovery is that he came up with it while he was still a student.