Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (19 Oct 1910 - 21 Aug 1995) was known throughout his life as Chandra. Chandra wanted to be a scientist and his mother encouraged him to follow this route. He had a role model in his paternal uncle Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman who went on to win the Nobel prize in 1930 for his 1928 discovery of Raman scattering and the Raman effect, which is a change in the wavelength of light occurring when a beam of light is deflected by molecules.

Chandra studied at Presidency College, University of Madras, and he wrote his first research paper while still an undergraduate there. The paper was published in the Proceeding of the Royal Society where it had been submitted by Ralph Fowler.

Chandra obtained a scholarship from the Indian government to finance his studies in England, and in 1930 he left India to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. From 1933 to 1937 he undertook research at Cambridge, but he returned to India in 1936 to marry Lalitha on 11 September.

At first he worked in Yerkes Observatory, part of the University of Chicago in Wisconsin. Later he moved to work on the university campus in the city of Chicago. During World War II he worked in the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Two reports, written in 1943, show the type of problems he was working on at this time: the first is On the decay of plane shock waves while the second is The normal reflection of a blast wave. He was honoured with being appointed Morton D Hull distinguished service professor of the University of Chicago in 1952.

Chandrasekhar published around 400 papers and many books.
His research interests were exceptionally broad but we can divide them into topics and rough periods when he was concentrating on these particular topics.

- stellar structure, including the theory of white dwarfs, from 1929 to 1939.
- stellar dynamics from 1939 to 1943.
- the theory of radiative transfer and the quantum theory of the negative ion of hydrogen from 1943 to 1950.
- Hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability from 1950 to 1961.
- During most of the 1960s he studied the equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium but during this period he also began work on topics from general relativity, the radiation reaction process, and the stability of relativistic stars.
- During the period from 1971 to 1983 he undertook research into the mathematical theory of black holes, then for the last period of his life he worked on the theory of colliding gravitational waves.

In 1930 Chandra showed that a star of a mass greater than 1.4 times that of the Sun (now known as the Chandrasekhar's limit) had to end its life by collapsing into an object of enormous density unlike any object known at that time.

Many years later Chandra was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics in 1983 for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars.

He found the Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (1983).

His other books include
- An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939)
- Principles of Stellar Dynamics (1942)
- Radiative Transfer (1950)
- Plasma Physics (1960)
- Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability (1961)
- Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium (1969)
- Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science (1987)
- Newton's Principia for the Common Reader (1995).

These texts have played a major role in mathematical astronomy.

From 1952 until 1971 Chandrasekhar was editor of the Astrophysical Journal . This journal was originally a local University of Chicago publication, but it grew in stature to become national publication of the American Astronomical Society, then a leading international journal.

Chandrasekhar received many honours for his outstanding contributions some of which, such as

- the Nobel prize for Physics in 1983
- the Royal Society's Royal Medal of 1962
- the Royal Society's Copley Medal of 1984
- the Bruce medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- the Henry Draper medal of the National Academy of Sciences (United States)
- the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Chandra retired in 1980 but continued to live in Chicago where he was made professor emeritus in 1985. He continued to give thought-provoking lectures such as Newton and Michelangelo which he delivered at the 1994 Meeting of Nobel Laureates held in Lindau. Other lectures in a similar vein include Shakespeare, Newton and Beethoven or patterns of creativity and The perception of beauty and the pursuit of science.

Courtesy:Internet