chandra2

Someone once remarked that a genius is one who sees something which is not there, takes a shot at it and hits it. In that sense, Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a genius who stunned the world by the depth and scope of his discoveries.
In 1930, Chandrasekhar made a sea voyage to England to enroll in Trinity College, Cambridge. As he sat on the deck, the 21-year-old Chandrasekhar gazed at the stars and wondered what happened to a star once it had burnt all its nuclear fuel. Three years later, he thought he had found a complete mathematical theory about the dying stars. But when he presented his ideas at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society on January 11, 1935, he was ridiculed by one of the world's respected astrophysicists.
"I had gone to the meeting thinking that I would be proclaimed for making a startling discovery. But they made a fool of me. I was distraught. I did not know whether to continue my career ..." he recalled in a conversation.
After this misadventure, and once he had taken his doctoral degree, Chandrasekhar thought of returning to India. "For a whole year I tried to get some job but I just could not get any. I was forced to make the best of the tragic situation..." That was how he joined the University of Chicago and became a professor. He was the first non-white on the faculty of the university. Here, he compiled his 'ridiculed' work in a book entitled An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure, and closed the topic. In his never-ending 'quest for perspectives', he took up a new topic - the distributions of stars in galaxies. Almost five decades later, in 1983, Chandrasekhar's first work was recognized. The announcement of his being selected for the Nobel Prize, was made on October 19, which happened to be his birthday. He, therefore, called the Prize 'a nice birthday gift'

Chandrasekhar shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with an American, Professor William Fowler. The citation referred to the work he had accomplished when he was in his 20s. The world at large did not, of course, wait for the Nobel Committee to make up its mind. Once it became known that Chandrasekhar's discovery was right, recognition came to him from all directions. He was showered with innumerable awards, degrees, and medals. His book An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure, published in 1939, is still used as a reference book by students of astrophysics all over the world. It was rightly said that the stature of the Nobel Prize was enhanced when it was given to Chandrasekhar, and not the other way round!

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a nephew of the Nobel laureate C.V. Raman, was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, on October 19, 1910. Known affectionately as 'Chandra' to his friends and colleagues, he studied at the Madras Presidency College. While still a student, he wrote an essay for which he won a physics prize - a classic book by the British astronomer, Arthur Eddington. The book created in him an abiding interest in stars and galaxies. He began wondering about the fate of stars when they collapse at the end of their active life. The Madras University recognized his genius by offering him a research scholarship to England. What followed is history.
Chandrasekhar had an extraordinary style of working. He would select a field of study, research it tirelessly - sometimes for years - compile his studies in a treatise, and then change to another field of specialization. "My attitude to science," he observed, "can be likened to the approach of a sculptor who wishes to create a structure which bears the stamp of his personality. Once he has finished the structure, he does not go on chiseling it here and there for the rest of his life. And I have been fortunate in selecting half-a-dozen topics which have suited my temperament." His style of working has come to be known as the Chandrasekhar Style.

It is said that when the Nobel Committee met to decide upon Chandrasekhar's name for the award, it faced a rather delicate dilemma. How could one major accomplishment possibly be cited when the awardee had distinguished himself in so many fields of science - Chandra had listed seven major fields of his discoveries in his biographical note to the Committee!

"One of the unfortunate facts about the pursuit of science the way I have done it is that I had to sacrifice other interests in life - literature, music, traveling. I wanted to read all the plays of Shakespeare very carefully, line by line, word by word. I know I could have been a different person had I done this. I don't know if regret is the right term for what I feel. But sooner or later one has to reconcile these losses," he once observed.
Teaching was Chandra's passion. Even in the severest Chicago winters, he would drive 160 km to take a class of only two American-Chinese students, both of whom later received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957. He trained many students and researchers.
Though Chandra left India to pursue a career abroad, the Nobel laureate remained Indian at heart. He would visit his motherland almost every year.
Chandra made fundamental contributions across the entire range of mathematical astrophysics. He was distinguished for his technical brilliance. He divided his time between the heavens and the history of ideas.
Chandra was not only a brilliant astrophysicist, but also a distinguished writer of popular science. It is often difficult to decide whether he was a physicist, a mathematician, a writer or an astronomer. "The work done by Chandrasekhar is more relevant today than ever before. We use his equations in space research, remote sensing and modern astronomy. In fact, there is no field in which some or other of his discoveries are not used," says Yash Pal, the well-known space scientist.

Chandrasekhar's Theory
In his long and remarkable career, Chandrasekhar conducted many outstanding researches in the field of astronomy. The one for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize has come to be known as the Chandrasekhar Limit. Let us see what it is all about.
Have you ever wondered how stars are born, how they evolve and how they die?
As you may know, a star is formed in a vast cloud of gas and dust particles called nebula, which floats in space.
When gravity pulls such clouds, they compress into a mass of particles. And the pressure so generated, produces heat.
A portion of this heat is radiated out in various directions. This helps the mass to further compress. The process continues till a stage is reached when the temperature inside rises to over one million degrees Celsius. At such temperatures, atoms of hydrogen gas begin to combine, or fuse together, to form helium gas. In this process, they release an enormous amount of energy as light and heat. Then a star is born.
Every bright star is like the Sun, that is, a huge globe of glowing gas. It looks small only because it is so far away.
Stars differ greatly in size, density and temperature. They can be of the size of the Sun or many times larger or smaller than the Sun.
The life of a star depends on the hydrogen 'fuel' in its mass. Sooner or later, a time comes when it runs out of 'fuel' and begins to die. A star with a mass similar to that of the Sun, first swells in size and becomes a type of star scientists call a red giant.

Then the star starts to shrink, becoming smaller and smaller, until it is no bigger than the Earth. Such a star is called a white dwarf. For its size, a white dwarf is very heavy. A teaspoonful of material from a white dwarf weighs many tonnes!
A star with mass greater than that of the Sun dies a spectacular death. It swells up into an enormous super giant, many times its own size. Then it blasts itself apart in a mighty explosion called a supernova.
After the supernova, a tiny star sometimes remains. It is called a neutron star, because it is made up of particles called neutrons.

A very heavy star, several times more massive than the Sun, goes on collapsing under the pull of its gravity, until it becomes a black hole, an area of space from where even light cannot escape.
According to the Chandrasekhar Limit, a star becomes a white dwarf only if its mass is 1.4 times that of the mass of the Sun. If a star has a mass more than the 'limit', it explodes and turns into a supernova. Although Chandrasekhar calculated his 'limit' purely on mathematical equations, it has been verified that all the white dwarfs have masses within this prescribed limit.