 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar investigated stellar structure and stability by connecting microscopic physics to the equilibrium of entire stars. His analysis of white dwarfs included the effect of special relativity on the electron degeneracy pressure supporting them against gravity.

At sufficiently high mass density, increasing density does not make that support grow rapidly enough to balance arbitrarily large stellar mass. The resulting Chandrasekhar limit is about 1.4 solar masses for the usual composition assumption. It is a limit for this form of stellar support, with major consequences for the possible endpoints of stellar evolution.^[ref]

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) was an Indian-American astrophysicist renowned for his significant contributions to the understanding of stellar evolution and the structure of stars. He is best known for his work on the Chandrasekhar limit, which is the maximum mass (approximately 1.4 times the mass of the Sun) that a white dwarf star can have before it becomes unstable and can no longer support itself against gravitational collapse.