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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, popular as “Chandra”, was an Indo-American scientist and astrophysicist who stayed in America during his profession. He was one of the popular scientists of the 20th century. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar contributions to physics, applied mathematics, and astrophysics are exceptional. He shared the Nobel prize with William A. Fowler in 1983 for the important discoveries on the developmental stages of massive stars. He was famous for the invention of the Chandrashekhar limit, the theory of Brownian motion, the theory of illumination and the polarisation of the sunlit sky, the general theory of relativity, and relativistic astrophysics and the mathematical theory of black holes. In January 2011, an exhibition of life and works was conducted at Science City in Kolkata.
Childhood life
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born in Lahore, British India, on 19th October 1910. The family shifted from Lahore to Allahabad in 1916 and settled in Madras finally in 1918. He had two elder sisters, three younger brothers, and four younger sisters. His father, Chandrashekhara Subrahmanya Iyer, was an officer in the Indian Audits and Accounts Department. His mother, Sita, was a woman of high analytical skills. C.V. Raman, the first Indian to be awarded the Nobel prize in science, was his father’s younger brother.
Married Life
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar married Lalitha Doraiswamy in September 1936. She was a fellow student at Presidency College. They both got US citizenship in the year 1953 and settled there.
Education
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar completed his homeschooling with the help of his parents until the age of 12. His father taught him physics and mathematics, whereas his mother taught him Tamil. He later joined Hindu High School in Triplicane, Madras, in 1922. Afterwards, he was admitted to Presidency College, affiliated with the University of Madras from 1925-to 1930, and secured a bachelor’s degree in B.Sc. (Hon.) in physics. After completing his graduation, he joined Born’s Institute of Gottingen. He completed his final year of post-graduate studies at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. In 1933, he was granted a PhD at Cambridge with a dissertation on rotating self-gravitating polytropes. Trinity College at Cambridge granted the prize fellowship after obtaining his doctorate.
Profession and Research
In December 1936, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was appointed as an assistant professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Yerkes and stayed at the University of Chicago. Later, in 1941, he was promoted to Associate Professor 1941. In 1953, he was nominated as the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Provider of Theoretical Astrophysics. In 1966, NASA constructed the Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research (LASR), and he seized one of the four corner offices on the second floor. During World War II, i.e. in 1943, he also worked with the Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. He was declared a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and received the society’s Royal Medal in 1963. He was also honoured with the US National Medal of Science in 1967.
Other Works
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked as an editor of “The Astrophysical Journal” from 1952 to 1971. He also worked on a project dedicated to describing the detailed geometric arguments by using the language and the methods of ordinary calculus. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar became a voluntary member of the International Academy of Science. He published approximately ten books on different topics of theoretical astrophysics. He guided over 50 students to their PhDs, and many of them got Nobel Prizes, too.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s Contribution to Astrophysics
Between 1929 and 1939, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was deeply interested in astrophysics. While travelling by ship in 1930 to start his PhD at Cambridge, he calculated a number, which is now known as the Chandrashekhar Limit, in his memory. Its value is 1.4 and identifies the fate of stars. He declared this result in the Astrophysical Journal in 1931.
In 1930, scientists trusted all-stars would gradually fade to become white dwarfs. Chandrashekhar discovered that a white dwarf appears only if its mass is less than or equal to 1.4 times our sun’s mass. It is known that the inward pull of gravity and the outward pressure of nuclear reactions are balanced usually. When the star ends of normal existence, the outward push is weak, and the star shrinks. It depends on its mass. As there is more mass, the inward pressure of gravity will be stronger.
If the pulled inward mass is less than or equal to the Chandrashekar limit, the star will be a white dwarf, whereas if the pulled inward mass is greater than the Chandrashekar limit, the star would become a neutron star or black hole. It was agreed that the ultimate fate of stars depends on their masses.
The Nobel Prize
Subrahmanyan Chandrashekar was honoured with the Nobel Prize in physics for his “theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars”, shared with William Fowler.
Conclusion
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar inventions on the origin and structure of stars gain a major place in the world of science. His work in astrophysics is amazing, and he always wanted to remain outside the mainstream of research. Throughout his journey in life, he aimed to gain knowledge and understanding.
