Many people spend their entire lives dedicated to one topic of research, but Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar didn't limit himself to just one. 

Born in India in 1910, Chandrasekhar's parents homeschooled him until he was twelve. It was then that his mother inspired him by encouraging him to always seek new knowledge.

He attended Presidency College in India, where he got his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1930.

He was then awarded a Government of India scholarship and used that go to graduate school at the University of Cambridge in England, where he became a research student under Professor William Fowler.

During his time at Cambridge, he spent his time studying the limiting mass of degenerate stars. He even had a limit named after him, the Chandrasekhar limit, his most notable work, which is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star, and he was awarded the bronze medal for his work.

Chandrasekhar received his PhD in 1933 and also received a Prize Fellowship at Trinity college, making him the second Indian to be elected.

Chandrasekhar at the University of Chicago. (University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf1-01649], Stephen Lewellyn, University of Chicago Library.)

He later accepted a position at the University of Chicago in 1936, where he was promoted to a professor within just a couple of years, and he remained there for the rest of his life.

Chandrasekhar was always seeking more knowledge, thus learning about many subjects and accomplishing many things.

He worked on ballistics during WWII, studied more on white dwarfs, researched radiation transfer, studied the mathematical theory of black holes and gravitational waves and published many books and papers on his work.

In 1983, Chandrasekhar received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of stars, and he shared this prize with his friend and colleague, William Fowler. 

The six winners of the 1983 Nobel Prizes, with Chandrasekhar on the right. (AP Photo)

Aside from receiving a Nobel Prize and creating the well-known Chandrasekhar limit, NASA named one of its observatories after him, the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Chandrasekhar passed away in 1995, but his legacy lives on through his work and awards named after him that are offered to PhD students and physicists for their outstanding work.  

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