Chandrasekhar

Chandrasekhar is a surname of Indian origin and is most commonly associated with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an Indian‑American theoretical physicist whose work transformed astrophysics. Born in 1910 in Lahore, then part of British India, he pursued advanced study in physics and later settled in the United States. His research on the structure and evolution of stars led to the identification of a critical mass for white dwarfs, now known as the Chandrasekhar limit. This limit, about 1.4 solar masses, marks the maximum mass a white dwarf can have while supported by electron degeneracy pressure; exceeding it implies gravitational collapse into a neutron star or black hole. Chandrasekhar's theoretical results helped explain the end states of stars and the processes that drive stellar evolution.

In his career, he spent much of his professional life at the University of Chicago, where he conducted his seminal work and mentored generations of physicists. In 1983, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of stellar evolution, with the prize shared for related work on nuclear processes in stars. His contributions are widely recognized in astrophysics and the physics of dense matter. The surname Chandrasekhar remains common in India and among people of Indian heritage, and the term Chandrasekhar limit is a lasting scientific legacy named after him.