Søndag den 4. september 2005
Månedens astronom: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995)
 
- Født i Lahore, britisk Indien, 9 søskende, faderen officer, moderen intellektuel, oversatte Ibsens "Et dukkehjem"
- Undervist hjemme til 12 år
- 1918: Familien flyttede til Madras - Hindu High School til 1925
- Universitetsuddannelse 1925-30 - fysik, bachelor i juni 1930
- Regerings-stipeniat til studier i Cambridge, England, juli 1930 - Under Fowler (Spektroskopi-kvantemekanik-kerneprocesser i stjerner)
- På sejlturten fra Bombay til England beregnede han, at visse stjerner kunne ende deres liv ved at kollapse til et punkt. Sir Arthur Eddington - the grand old man of British astrophysics ( Påviste det krumme rum - solformørkelse 1919) - latterliggjorde straks ideen. Ingen turde støtte Chandra før Eddingtons død i 1944
- ph.d 1933.
- På anbefaling af P.A.M Dirac tilbragte han 3 år på "Niels Bohr Instituttet" i København.
- 1937 Inviteret til Havard University, Cambridge Massachusetts, af Harlow Shapley. Var her resten af livet!
- "During my last two years (1928-30) at the Presidency College in Madras, I formed a friendship with Lalitha Doraiswamy, one year my junior. This friendship matured; and we were married (in India) in September 1936 prior to my joining the University of Chicago. In the sharing of our lives during the past forty-seven years, Lalitha's patient understanding, support, and encouragement have been the central facts of my life.
- Bogproduktion:
1. An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939, University of Chicago Press; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1967).
2a. Principles of Stellar Dynamics (1943, University of Chicago Press; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1960).
2b. 'Stochastic Problems in Physics and Astronomy', Reviews of Modern Physics, 15, 1 - 89 (1943); reprinted in Selected Papers on Noise and Stochastic Processes by Nelson Wax, Dover Publications, Inc., 1954.
3. Radiative Transfer (1950, Clarendon Press, Oxford; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1960).
4. Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability (1961, Clarendon Press, Oxford; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1981).
5. Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium (1968; Yale University Press).
6. The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (1983, Clarendon Press, Oxford).
- Fik Nobelprisen i 1983 - sammen med Fowler. Begrundelse:
- 'The highly collapsed configurations of a stellar mass', Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 91, 456-66 (1931).
'The maximum mass of ideal white dwarfs', Astrophys. J., 74, 81 - 2 (1931).
'The density of white dwarfstars', Phil. Mag., 11, 592 - 96 (1931).
'Some remarks on the state of matter in the interior of stars', Z. f. Astrophysik, 5, 321-27 (1932).
'The physical state of matter in the interior of stars', Obseroatoy, 57, 93 - 9 (1934)
'Stellar configurations with degenerate cores', Observatoy, 57, 373 - 77 (1934).
'The highly collapsed configurations of a stellar mass' (second paper), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 95, 207 - 25 (1935).
'Stellar configurations with degenerate cores', Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 95, 226-60 (1935).
'Stellar configurations with degenerate cores' (second paper), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 95, 676 - 93 (1935).
'The pressure in the interior of a star', Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 96, 644 - 47 (1936).
'On the maximum possible central radiation pressure in a star of a given mass', Observatoy, 59, 47 - 8 (1936).
'Dynamical instability of gaseous masses approaching the Schwarzschild limit in general relativity', Phys. Rev. Lett., 12, 114 - 16 (1964); Erratum, Phys. Rev. Lett., 12, 437 - 38 (1964).
'The dynamical instability of the white-dwarf configurations approaching the limiting mass' (with Robert F. Tooper), Astrophys. J., 139, 1396 - 98 (1964).
'The dynamical instability of gaseous masses approaching the Schwarzschild limit in general relativity', Astrophys. J., 140, 417 - 33 (1964).
'Solutions of two problems in the theory of gravitational radiation', Phys. Rev. Lett., 24, 611 - 15 (1970); Erratum, Phys. Rev. Lett., 24, 762 (1970).
'The effect of graviational radiation on the secular stability of the Maclaurin spheroid', Astrophys. J., 161, 561 - 69 (1970
- Kort sagt på dansk:
Fandt bl.a. den teoretiske grænsemasse for en hvid dværg. En stjerne, som har en masse der er større end 1,4 solmasser vil eksplodere som en supernova, mens kerneområdet kollapser til en neutronstjerne eller et sort hul. Det er bl.a. i supernovarester, at man observerer en intens röntgenstråling. Hvis restmassen er mindre, ender stjernen som en hvid dværg.
- Til Chandrasekhars ære er NASAs nye højtopløsningsröntgenteleskop kommet til at hedde CHANDRA.
Se artikel i Sky and Telescope September 2005. Her behandles konflikten mellem Chandrasekhar og Eddington. "Empire of the stars: Obsessions, Friendship, and betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes"
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