Saturday, April 18, 2020

INTERSTING FACTS ABOUT Dr. SUBRHAMANYAN CHANDRASEKHAR

1. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar along with his siblings continued to study at home till he attained the age of 11. If we compare according to today's education system, he joined the school in the 7th class. His parents taught English and Tamil to him.

2. According to V. S. Jayaraman, a classmate of Chandrasekhar both in high school and college, Chandra had said, God was a hypothesis invented by man to regulate man's conduct and establish order and behavior between man and man.



3. Chandrasekhar was inspired by Srinivasan Ramanujan and his decision was to pursue mathematics by the example of Ramanujan. Although later he pursued graduation in Physics. He had listened to the name of Ramanujan two times, the first time his mother told him the news about the death of Ramanujan. the second time when he listened when his uncle C.V. Raman and his father talking about Ramanujan.

4. Though Chandrasekhar registered for a BA Honours in Physics he continued to study mathematics. He later said " My college professors allowed me to do what was normally forbidden. Though Chandrasekhar did not study mathematics formally, he developed a strong background in mathematics in addition to Physics, which he officially studied.

5. At the age of 18, as an undergraduate Physics student of Presidency College, Chandrasekhar presented a research paper which was quite unusual in those days. When his teacher, prof. Parameswaran, who was in the audience pointed out that the research paper was from an 18-year-old undergraduate student, the audience broke into thunderous applause.

6. When Chandrasekhar presented his paper on the limit of mass of white dwarfs at the meeting of the Royal Society in London on 11 January 1935, Eddington was not happy. After Chandra finished the presentation, Eddington outright rejected  Chandra's theory. When Chandra stood up to reply in his own defense he was not allowed. So many times his theory rejected and jokes made on his theory. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for "...theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". Despite his remarkable piece of work, for which he awarded noble price more than 40 years later. 



7. Soon after, in early 1973, his Ph.D. student who had joined Himachal Pradesh university met Chandra in Delhi. Chandra asked him how the research work was progressing. His student told I need journals, which the new university was unable to provide me. Chandra on spot decided to gift to Himachal Pradesh University his entire personal collection of journals.


8.NASA's advanced X-Ray Observatory astrophysics facility had been renamed Chandra X-ray Observatory in honor of Dr. Chandrasekhar.



9. "Chandra probably thought longer and deeper about our Universe than anyone since Einstein," said Martin Rees, Great Britain's Astronomer Royal.




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