This chap has got the world's most sensitive space-based X-ray observatory named after him. And a dimensionless number representing magnetic field. And a cosmological limit related to gravitational collapse which he was perhaps a decade ahead of time in discovering!
Born in an enlightened family - his uncle won a Nobel and his mother translated Ibsen's work into Tamil - he won a scholarship to study at Cambridge with the renowned Prof Ralph Fowler.
Thank goodness for the fact that he had nothing to do on the voyage to London that interested him, for he worked out the cosmological limit on the ship! He worked on it for the next half a decade and was advised by people like Paul Dirac, Fowler, Max Born and Niels Bohr. His work was made famous then for the wrong reason though, as the eminent astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington publicly criticised and ridiculed it - so strongly that many other physicists like Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli who supported the research remained largely silent.
The chap and his research was proved right later though, and created a lasting impact on the world of physics. So much that he got the Nobel mainly for it, more than 50 years after that voyage to London. Eddington's unfortunate treatment of his work that time was to be America's good fortune though, as the hurt young physicist sought work outside the UK, serving at the University of Chicago for half of a century since then, and even getting an offer to be a director at Princeton which he didn't take up.
In 60 years of career studying and teaching science and physics, the average age of his scores of co-authors always remained the same as what his age was when he had started the career - it is a remarkable proof of his enthusiasm to work with young aspiring students.
But perhaps very few tributes to the man come closer than what his own student at Chicago and that master of scientific story-telling - Carl Sagan - said about him - "I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar".
Though I have read that he encouraged only those students who've completed their PhD to use his shortened name, and that he was 'Chandrasekhar' for the rest, I'll take the kind of liberty which NASA took when naming their X-ray telescope, out of fondness for the chap's contribution to our knowledge. Happy 103rd birthday Chandra!
Born in an enlightened family - his uncle won a Nobel and his mother translated Ibsen's work into Tamil - he won a scholarship to study at Cambridge with the renowned Prof Ralph Fowler.
Thank goodness for the fact that he had nothing to do on the voyage to London that interested him, for he worked out the cosmological limit on the ship! He worked on it for the next half a decade and was advised by people like Paul Dirac, Fowler, Max Born and Niels Bohr. His work was made famous then for the wrong reason though, as the eminent astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington publicly criticised and ridiculed it - so strongly that many other physicists like Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli who supported the research remained largely silent.
The chap and his research was proved right later though, and created a lasting impact on the world of physics. So much that he got the Nobel mainly for it, more than 50 years after that voyage to London. Eddington's unfortunate treatment of his work that time was to be America's good fortune though, as the hurt young physicist sought work outside the UK, serving at the University of Chicago for half of a century since then, and even getting an offer to be a director at Princeton which he didn't take up.
In 60 years of career studying and teaching science and physics, the average age of his scores of co-authors always remained the same as what his age was when he had started the career - it is a remarkable proof of his enthusiasm to work with young aspiring students.
But perhaps very few tributes to the man come closer than what his own student at Chicago and that master of scientific story-telling - Carl Sagan - said about him - "I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar".
Though I have read that he encouraged only those students who've completed their PhD to use his shortened name, and that he was 'Chandrasekhar' for the rest, I'll take the kind of liberty which NASA took when naming their X-ray telescope, out of fondness for the chap's contribution to our knowledge. Happy 103rd birthday Chandra!
