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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• The physicist Eddington publicly mocked — then history proved right

  In 1935, 24-year-old Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed that white dwarf stars above about 1.44 solar masses can't be held up by electron pressure and must collapse further. At the …

  — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Chandrasekhar–Eddington dispute

• A 19-year-old worked out a dying star's mass limit during a boat trip to England

  In 1930, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar sailed from India to study at Cambridge, and used the eighteen-day voyage to work out what happens to a star once it runs out of fuel. He calcul…

  — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs

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