MG 7 · 1994
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a Nobel laureate whose work founded key parts of stellar structure and relativistic astrophysics.
1910, Lahore, Pakistan
University of Chicago, Chicago, United States
“For his contributions to the analysis of gravitational phenomena from Newton to Einstein and especially for leading the way to relativistic astrophysics with the concept of critical mass for gravitational collapse.”
MG VII, Stanford, United States
Work
The fate of compact stars depends on the balance between gravity and quantum pressure.
Chandrasekhar derived the limiting mass for white dwarfs and developed deep analyses of stellar structure, radiative transfer, and black holes.
The Chandrasekhar limit made gravitational collapse a quantitative prediction and helped establish the physics of compact objects.