Abstract
Indian-American theoretical astrophysicist S. Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics (with William Fowler) for work done in the 1930s, which established an absolute upper mass limit, now called the Chandrasekhar limit, for an astronomical object in which the pressure support comes from electrons being crowded as closely together as quantum mechanics permits. This limit applies to white dwarf stars, such as the Sun will eventually become, and to the cores of more massive stars that then collapse into neutron stars or black holes.
Roy H. Garstang: deceased.
Selected References
Garstang, R.H. 1997. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995). Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 109: 73–77.
Israel, Werner. 1987. Dark stars: The evolution of an idea. In Three hundred years of gravitation, ed. S.W. Hawking and W. Israel, 199–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (On Chandra vs. Eddington).
Parker, E.N. 1997. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences 72: 29–48.
Saikia, D.J., and Virginia Trimble, eds. 2011. Fluid Flows to Black Holes: A Tribute to S. Chandrasekhar on his Birth Centenary. Singapore: World Scientific Books.
Tayler, R.J. 1996. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 42: 79–94.
Wali, K.C. 1991. Chandra: A biography of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2010. A scientific autobiography: S. Chandrasekhar. Singapore: World Scientific.
———. 2020. S. Chandrasekhar: Selected correspondence and conversations. Singapore: World Scientific.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Garstang, R.H. (2022). Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan. In: Nicholson, P.D., Bartlett, J.L. (eds) Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0738-1_263-5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0738-1_263-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-0738-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-0738-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan- Published:
- 29 June 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0738-1_263-5
-
Original
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan- Published:
- 22 January 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0738-1_263-4