Shakespeare once said that he feared some terrible fate hanging in the stars; S. Chandrasekhar, the greatest astrophysicist of the 20th century, discovered the terrible fate of the stars! In the history of Indian mathematics and physics, there are three names held in legendary status: Srinivasan Ramanujan, C. V. Raman, and S. Chandrasekhar. The third person is the least known of the three, yet he is possibly the greatest and most important astrophysicist of the 20th century: Subramanyam Chandrasekhar. Like many other Indian scientists and mathematicians, his name is well known, but his work less so. His seminal contribution to physics is the foundation of modern astrophysics. He was the second Indian to get a Nobel Prize in Physics. He faced obstacles and resistance wherever he went, either due to the color of his skin or the content of his work, yet he could only think of all the work he wanted and needed to do. What was it about this man that fascinated and bewildered so many?
Chandra’s most famous accomplishment is his discovery that there is a mass limit to white dwarfs, now named the Chandrasekhar Limit in his honor. On his first trip to England to study at Cambridge, he realized that there was a way to apply Relativity, Einstein’s theory of time, space, and gravity, to Quantum Mechanics, the theory of atoms and subatomic particles, and thus found that there was a limit on how massive a white dwarf could be. At the time, scientists thought that the two theories were entirely incompatible. Now Chandra had applied relativity to quantum mechanics. So what did he do? He shared his work with no one, instead working on other problems in Stellar Dynamics first. When he finally revealed his work to the world a couple years later, he was attacked by none other than Arthur Eddington, the man who experimentally confirmed Einstein’s theory of relativity. Some say txhe attack was fueled by racism; all indications point in the opposite direction. Eddington was good friends with Chandra, and he most likely attacked the idea because it destroyed his entire theory of the universe. Chandra, shocked by the sudden attack from a close friend, left the field of Stellar Dynamics for 40 years. His theory was eventually proven right with the discovery of Neutron Stars and Black Holes, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work.
Many years later, Chandra moved to the United States and began to work at the University of Chicago, where he was editor of the American Astro-Physics Journal(AAPJ), He worked tirelessly, day and night, to proofread and edit every paper that came in. Still, he received letters of discouragement, anger, and even racism. One man attempted to stop him from joining the American Astronomical Society simply because “browns don’t belong here”. Yet Chandra learned to live and thrive with all the new friends he made in America. He tutored many students and supervised their PhD’s. At one point, he drove 30 miles every day to teach a class of just two students! Those two students are the famous Yang and Mills, who went on to share a Nobel Prize for their PhD.
Chandra received discouragement wherever he went, but he still kept going. He combed through subject after subject, releasing book after book on every intricacy of astrophysics. There are two kinds of scientists: those who start fields, and those who finish them. Chandra fits perfectly into the latter category. After saying the last word in every subject he touched, he went on to the next subject to deconstruct and finish. Chandra’s name is well recognized, but nobody knows what he did. So go, spread the word of this man, who went from a timid grad student to the greatest astronomer of his time.
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