Chandrasekhar: The all rounder

Abstract

This paper provides a very brief introduction to three of Chandrasekhar’s famous books on Stellar Structure, Hydrodynamics and Black Holes. In particular we summarize Chandra’s treatment of the “Thermal Instability” which plays such a crucial role in the understanding of convection zones in stellar atmospheres. We also outline three important ideas in fluid dynamics which are inexplicably omitted from Chandrasekhar’s Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability; the first is the Brunt–Väis˙alä frequency which appears in internal gravity waves and is closely related to Schwarzschild’s stability criterion; the second is the baroclinic instability which is important in atmospheric dynamics and meteorology, and the third is the conservation of potential vorticity which is central to the understanding of the planetary scale – Rossby waves.