Question

What is the contribution of S. Chandrasekhar to physics?

Answer 1

Hint: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indian-American astrophysicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. He made a key discovery in the theory of black holes.

Complete step by step solution:
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born on 19^th October 1910 in Lahore, Punjab (now Pakistan). He was the nephew of the famous Indian physicist C.V. Raman.
He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Presidency College in Madras. Then he got admission at Trinity College, Cambridge. Chandrasekhar spent his time measuring mean opacities and adding his findings to the development of an enhanced model for the limiting mass of the degenerate star in his first year at Cambridge as a research student of Fowler.
A distinctive style of mastering many fields of physics and astrophysics was established by Chandrasekhar; his professional life can therefore be separated into different parts. He will research a particular subject exhaustively, publish several articles on it and then write a book summarising the key principles in the field. For the next decade, he will then step on to another sector and replicate the trend.
Thus, during the years 1929 to 1939, he studied stellar structure, including the theory of white dwarfs and subsequently based on stellar mechanics, the Brownian motion theory from 1939 to 1943.
Chandrasekhar was only 19 when he finished his calculations illustrating a white dwarf limit of 1.4 solar masses. With these calculations that a white dwarf is more massive than 1.4 solar masses would collapse under its own gravity.

Note: S. Chandrasekhar predicted the existence of black holes and white dwarfs long before their discovery. He died on 21^st August 1995.