Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, US/Indian astrophysicist (Lahore, 19 October 1910 – Chicago, Illinois 21 August 1995)

Nephew of Nobel Laureate physicist C.V. Raman

ACHIEVEMENTS

Published nearly 400 papers and many books  

Determined maximum mass of a star that can support itself against its own gravity without the aid of heat known as Chandrasekhar limit (1930)

Enunciated important theorems about cosmic masses stability under gravity, rotation and magnetic fields

Discovered  relativistic instability of radial oscillations in white dwarf stars

Showed the phenomenon of dynamical friction

Introduced the notion of a continuous distribution of matter with statistical fluctuations in density

Introduced relaxation concept in stellar dynamics  

Developed post-Newtonian approximation for treating the field equations of general relativity that became normal standard for computing gravitational waves in dynamical systems of massive particles

Performed the first estimates about the formation of chemical elements in stars (1942) with L.R. Henrick

Discovered tensor virial theorem

Derivated a radiactive transfer equation

HONORS

Physics Nobel Prize (1983)

Bruce Medal (1952)

Asteroid 1958 Chandra

EPONYMY

Chandrasekhar-Friedman-Schultz instability (1970)

Chandrasekhar-Schenberg limit (1942)

Chandrasekhar bosonic mass

Wick-Chandrasekhar method  

Chandrasekhar number

Chandrasekhar H-functions

Chandrasekhar-Kendall modes (1936)

Chandrasekhar-Münch equation

Chandrasekhar colliding wave plane

Chandrasekhar variational principle

Chandrasekhar virial equations

Chandrasekhar tensor

Chandrasekhar friction