ACTIVE RESEARCH ERA: 20th Century 

DATE OF DEATH: 08/21/1995

FIELD OF STUDY: Astrophysics 

AFFILIATED INSTITUTIONS OF WORK: 

• Presidency College- B.Sc (w/ honors) in Physics 
• Cambridge University- Ph.D
• Trinity College- Fellowship
• University of Chicago- Faculty 

RELATED PRINCETON COURSES: 

• AST 204
• PHY 523

Background, early life, and outside interests: 

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born in Lahore (which was, at the time, a part of British India) and was the 3rd of 10 children. His family was well educated, his mother was a highly intelligent woman who worked as a translator (translated into Tamil) and taught her kids to read. His father worked as the Deputy Auditor General of the Northwestern Railways. Chandrasekhar was homeschooled by his parents and private tutors until he was 12, around that age his father was transferred to Madras and he attended a high school there. By 14, Chandrasekhar had already determined he wanted to study physics at University. 

He attended Presidency College where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Physics. Shortly after graduating, he was awarded the Government of India scholarship for graduate studies in Cambridge, England. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1933 he was offered a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College. During a trip to Harvard in 1936, he was offered a position as a Research Associate at the University of Chicago and would join the faculty in 1937, he remained at the institution until his death in 1995. 

Most Notable Achievements:

Chandrasekhar determined that a star with a mass more than 1.44 times that of the sun continues to collapse and blows off its gaseous envelope into a supernova explosion and becomes a neutron star rather than forming a white dwarf star; even bigger stars can continue to collapse into black holes. These findings are referred to as Chandra’s Limit, which now states the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. He also received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his studies on the structure and evolution of stars.

Citations:  

"S. Chandrasekhar | Biography, Discoveries, Nobel Prize, Accomplishments, & Facts". 2022. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Subrahmanyan-Chandrasekhar.

"Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar". 2022. Starchild.Gsfc.Nasa.Gov. https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/chandra….

"The Nobel Prize In Physics 1983". 2022. Nobelprize.Org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1983/chandrasekhar/biographic….

NOMINATED BY: Lazarena Lazarova 

Written by Vanessa Herrera