Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Born

October 19, 1910

Died

August 21, 1995 (aged 84)

Known as

mathematician, physicist, astronomer, astrophysicist, university teacher

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indian-American astrophysicist. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars." His mathematical treatment of stellar evolution yielded many of the current theoretical models of the later evolutionary stages of massive stars. The Chandrasekhar limit describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf. Above it, a stellar remnant will collapse to form a neutron star or black hole. Many concepts, institutions and inventions, including the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, are named after him.

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