Word: chandrasekhar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, astrophysicist, Doctor of Science...
...only woman to receive an honorary degree is Barbara McClintock, a geneticist known for her experiments with cell structure. Harvard also honored another scientist, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an astrophysicist...
Considered by many as the greatest living mathematical astronomer, Chandrasekhar developed the theory of the dwarf star that explains the final stages of stellar evolution. Born in Lahore, India, in 1910, he became a U.S. citizen in 1953. His other research has included work in the dynamics of stellar systems, theory of stellar atmospheres, radiative transfer, hydrodynamics and hydromagnetic relativity. From 1952 to 1971, he acted as managing editor of Astrophysical Journal. Chandrasekhar received the 1966 National Medal of Science for his contribution to the study of cosmic dynamics. His books include Principles of Stellar Dynamics (1942) and Radioactive Transfer...
...Chandrasekhar's inscription reads: A theorist of genius whose writing and teaching have broadly influenced fundamental fields of astrophysics...
Preoccupying himself with this problem while traveling by ship from India to England to take up studies at Cambridge in the early 1930s, the young Chandrasekhar came to an astonishing conclusion. His calculations showed that if a star is larger than 1.4 times the mass of the sun when it begins its collapse, it will compress to a state even more dense than that of a white dwarf. How far could the star collapse? In one of the great understatements of modern science, Chandrasekhar would only say: "One is left speculating on other possibilities...