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The Chandrasekhar mass is the limiting mass of a cold nonrotating white dwarf supported by relativistic electron degeneracy pressure, about for ordinary composition. It bounds the retained remnant's mass, rather than the birth mass of a star that can lose an envelope. The ideal limit assumes fixed mean molecular weight per electron, Newtonian gravity and a noninteracting degenerate electron gas; electron capture, general relativity, stellar rotation and ignition can change the attainable endpoint.
The Chandrasekhar limit belongs to work of the early 1930s. In his 1983 retrospective, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar reprints the 1935 mass–radius sequence and then discusses stellar evolution and relativistic stability.[ref]
On Stars, Their Evolution and Their Stability by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Section 5, pp. 149–151, Figure 2; sections 7–8, pp. 156–159
The 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics recognized his broader theoretical work on stellar structure and stellar evolution; the other half recognized William Alfred Fowler's theoretical and experimental work on nuclear reactions underlying chemical element formation.[ref]The Nobel Prize in Physics 1983 by Nobel Prize Outreach. Award shares and motivations