Chandrasekhar studied at Trinity College and had the privilege to work with the giants of Physics. He collaborated with legends such as P.A.M. Dirac (1902-84), who gave us the beautiful equation that led to the prediction of anti-matter based on considering the negative energy solution to his namesake equation. Dirac encouraged Chandrasekhar to travel to Copenhagen to work with Neils Bohr (1885-62).
Neils Bohr won the Nobel prize for his “explanation of the hydrogen atom incorporating the ideas of Max Planck (1858-47) in quantising angular momentum and introducing energy levels in the hydrogen atom where electrons could exist”. Neils became a “father figure” and inspiration to the next generation of Quantum Physicists, including Werner Heisenberg (1901-76) and Wolfgang Pauli (1900-58), who worked with him. Werner and Neils remained friends throughout WWII during the Nazi atrocities advancing and iterating on the then embryonic theory of Quantum Physics.
Physics is Never Boring!
I recall when I first read that Planck was advised not to study Physics as the Physics community only had to tidy up Physics because Newton (1643-27) and Maxwell (1831-79) had resolved all major problems, which is almost as wrong as perhaps the equally famous statement of Thomas Watson (IBM president, 1943) regarding mankind’s need for computers: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson.
What Did Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar do?
Chandrasekhar is best remembered for his so-called limit, which is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. I recall when I first saw the equation predicting this mass as a final year Undergraduate, being in complete awe of it as it connected four of the most famous constants in Physics, namely ħ=h/(2π). “h” is Planck’s constant, π is pi, “c” the speed of light and G Newton’s gravitational constant.
This makes a similar impression to when I first saw Euler’s (1707-83) identity.
It combines the five fundamental constants of Mathematics, specifically e, the base of the natural logarithm, i the square-root of -1, which regrettably has been called imaginary throughout most of its history (but not by the great Italian algebraists of the 16th century who were first led to it), pi the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, 1 the multiplicative identity and 0 the additive identity.
One of my LSE students (at the Saturday School 2002-2005 and 2010-2021) had an interview at Cambridge to study Physics. He mentioned that one of the questions he was asked in his interview was to attempt to derive the Chandrasekhar limit; of course, he could not do it, but the tutor just wanted to see how he approached the problem under stress. Subsequently, he was offered a place at Cambridge and is now doing a post-doc at Yale.
So, friends, Chandrasekhar is not just a figure of history but our guide to the future. Enjoy his work and build upon it until you can. See you soon!
