Biography chandra chandrasekhar s

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Chandra proved that there was an upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf. But Chandra’s math was sound.

Over the decades, evidence of their existence emerged. At the same time, Chandra was known to have little patience: “Frivolous questions from people who did not appear to have studied the material thoroughly,” said Carl Sagan, AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PhD’60, “were dealt with in the manner of a summary execution.”

Chandra taught astrophysics for 15 years, but in 1952, the astronomy department revised its curriculum—which he had largely designed—effectively removing him.

But he befriended one of Raman’s colleagues, who introduced him to the work of Arnold Sommerfeld, one of several theorists transforming physics through quantum mechanics. “Chandra had to give most of his time to his science. Physics student at Presidency College, Madras

1929-1939 Studies of White Dwarf Stars

1930-1933 Ph.D.

He received 20 honorary degrees, was elected to 21 learned societies, and won several prominent awards, including the National Medal of Science and, in 1983, the Nobel Prize in Physics for the work he’d conducted 53 years before, as a young man at the very start of his journey.

When Chandra first proposed black holes, the idea was deemed absurd, UChicago astrophysicist Daniel Holz, SM’94, PhD’98, told the University podcast Big Brains.

His fellow recruits had been appointed assistant professors immediately and promoted the following year with tenure. But it didn’t make sense—such an object shouldn’t be able to resist its own gravity and should have collapsed. She would earn her master’s in physics first. Soc., 95, 676 - 93 (1935).

‘The pressure in the interior of a star’, Mon.

Not. Roy. Astron. Chandra published ten books and served as the editor of the prominent Astrophysical Journal for nineteen years. Rev. Lett., 24, 762 (1970).

‘The effect of gravitational radiation on the secular stability of the Maclaurin spheroid’, Astrophys. They shared the notebook from then on; at a party, Chandra gave her a rose. “If you were in Williams Bay,” said UChicago astrophysicist and Chandra’s graduate student Peter Vandervoort, AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PhD’60, in a 2017 interview, “you might as well be at the South Pole.

Lalitha attended lectures at the observatory, and Chandra urged her to resume her physics research. J., 139, 1396 - 98 (1964).

‘The dynamical instability of gaseous masses approaching the Schwarzschild limit in general relativity,’ Astrophys. While at sea on one leg of the voyage, reading physics publications to pass the time, the 19-year-old Chandra famously arrived at his Nobel-winning insight.

Sixty-eight years earlier, astronomers had first observed a white dwarf: the small, hot, extremely dense remnant left after a star burns through its fuel.

His father was a government officer while his mother was a highly intellectual woman that translated literary works into Tamil, an Indian dialect. Rev. Lett., 12, 437 - 38 (1964).

‘The dynamical instability of the white-dwarf configurations approaching the limiting mass’ (with Robert F. Tooper), Astrophys.

The observatory studies the universe in the x-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The StarChild site is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/GSFC.

StarChild Authors: The StarChild Team
StarChild Graphics & Music: Acknowledgments
StarChild Project Leader: Dr.

Laura A. Whitlock
Curator:
Responsible NASA Official:

But first he returned to India to see about a girl.

Chandra had been corresponding with his future wife for six years.

According to Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, "Chandra was a first-rate astrophysicist and a beautiful and warm human being.