Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) was an Indian-American astrophysicist who determined the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star, now called the Chandrasekhar limit. He spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, making foundational contributions to stellar structure, radiative transfer, and black hole theory. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the structure and evolution of stars.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
- Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) Overlapped 85 years →
- Cahit Arf (1910–1997) Overlapped 85 years →
- Dorothy Vaughan (1910–2008) Overlapped 85 years →
- Estée Lauder (1908–2004) Overlapped 85 years →
- Frank Whittle (1907–1996) Overlapped 85 years →
- Jacques Cousteau (1910–1997) Overlapped 85 years →
Life events
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born in Lahore (now in Pakistan) to a Tamil family; the physicist C. V. Raman was his paternal uncle.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar earned his bachelor's degree in physics from Presidency College in Madras.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWhile sailing to Cambridge for graduate study, Chandrasekhar calculated the maximum mass of a white dwarf star supported by electron degeneracy pressure.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar earned his doctorate at Trinity College, Cambridge, under R. H. Fowler, and was elected a Prize Fellow of Trinity.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar married Lalitha Doraiswamy, a fellow physics student from Presidency College, in September 1936.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar moved to the United States to join the University of Chicago and its Yerkes Observatory, where he remained for the rest of his career.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar edited The Astrophysical Journal for nearly two decades, turning it into a leading international journal.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar and his wife became citizens of the United States in 1953.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics with William A. Fowler for his theoretical studies of the structure and evolution of stars.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgChandrasekhar died of a heart attack in Chicago at the age of 84.
Source: en.wikipedia.org