Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Key Facts

1. 1

   Calculated the "Chandrasekhar Limit" (1.4 solar masses) — above this, white dwarfs collapse to neutron stars or black holes

2. 2

   Nobel Prize in Physics 1983 (with William Fowler) for his theoretical studies on the physical processes important to the structure and evolution of stars

3. 3

   NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (1999) was named in his honour; he was Turing's and Fermi's colleague at Chicago

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