Chandrasekhar's Fluid Dynamics

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) is justly famous for his lasting contributions to topics such as white dwarfs and black holes (which led to his Nobel Prize), stellar structure and dynamics, general relativity, and other facets of astrophysics. He also devoted some dozen or so of his prime years to fluid dynamics, especially stability and turbulence, and made important contributions. Yet in most assessments of his science, far less attention is paid to his fluid dynamics work because it is dwarfed by other, more prominent work. Even within the fluid dynamics community, his extensive research on turbulence and other problems of fluid dynamics is not well known. This review is a brief assessment of that work. After a few biographical remarks, I recapitulate and assess the essential parts of this work, putting my remarks in the context of times and people with whom Chandrasekhar interacted. I offer a few comments in perspective on how he came to work on turbulence and stability problems, on how he viewed science as an aesthetic activity, and on how one's place in history gets defined.

Dedução do limite de Chandrasekhar: uma abordagem didática dos trabalhos originais do autor

Resumo Os atuais modelos de evolução estelar estabelecem que estrelas possuindo até cerca de oito vezes a massa do Sol dão origem a anãs brancas no final de suas vidas. Na década de 1920 surgiram trabalhos que descreviam tais objetos como formados essencialmente por um gás de elétrons e núcleons, de forma que a força de sua pressão de degenerescência equilibrava a contração gravitacional, originando corpos estáveis e de alta densidade. Na década de 1930 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar lançou sua abordagem ao problema das anãs brancas em artigos onde ele deduziu as densidades e a massa máxima permitida para essas estrelas. Tal valor máximo para a massa é hoje conhecido como limite de Chandrasekhar e o objetivo aqui é analisar os trabalhos originais de seu descobridor, mostrando de forma didática os passos que levaram à dedução desse importante resultado.

The laureate as celebrity genius: How Scientific American’s John Horgan profiled Nobel Prize winners

When scientists become Nobel laureates, they become famous in science and public life, but few studies have examined the nature of their scientific celebrity. This article examines how Scientific American portrayed laureates in order to identify and explain core features of Nobel fame. It examines the portrayals of seven laureates – Francis Crick, Linus Pauling, Hans Bethe, Murray Gell-Mann, Brian Josephson, Philip Anderson and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – in magazine profiles written between 1992 and 1995 by science writer John Horgan. Its textual analysis finds the scientists are portrayed as combining the sociological characteristics of genius, including enormous productivity and lasting impact, with the representational characteristics of celebrities, such as the merging of public and private lives. Their form of scientific celebrity is grounded in their field-changing research, which is presented as a product of their idiosyncratic personalities. Nobel science is presented as knowledge created by an ultra-elite of exceptional individuals.

Chandra's Influence on Indian Astronomy

The extraordinary achievements of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra) have guided and inspired many younger astrophysicists. The brief survey seeks to highlight a few specific cases in India where, through his writings, lectures and discussions, Chandra made a lasting impact. It will be argued that although at a general, somewhat superficial level, Chandra is a light beacon to be followed, very few Indian astrophysicists reached a level where they could engage Chandra in a scientific discussion on a topic that interested him.

Lyman Spitzer. 26 June 1914 — 31 March 1997

One of the leading theoretical astrophysicists of the twentieth century, Lyman Spitzer showed a renaissance or even a classical figure in both his character and personal style. I once speculated that a biographer would some day remark on the importance of Spitzer's early exposure to ancient literature, and his family assured me that he had in fact been strongly influenced throughout his life by classical, especially Latin, models. If ever I have known an individual who fitted the renaissance ideal of the gentleman scholar (based, of course, on earlier Latin archetypes), it was Lyman. The upright bearing, courteous speech, clarity, and total independence of mind were the dress of a person seemingly dropped into our midst from another age. Born in 1914 into a prosperous Toledo, Ohio, commercial family, he later married into the local, still wealthier clan of the Canadays. After attending Scott High School in Toledo and then Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, he received his BA at Yale in 1935 and then went to Cambridge University for a year (1935–36), where he was influenced by Sir Arthur Eddington FRS and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (FRS 1944), who was an almost exact contemporary. Returning to the USA, he received his PhD in 1938 at Princeton, under the legendary Henry Norris Russell ForMemRS. Spitzer then went briefly to Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow, followed by a move to Yale, where he was appointed as instructor in 1939. It was shortly after moving to Yale that he married Doreen D. Canaday, herself a Bryn Mawr graduate, a totally charming and strong-willed woman with whom he raised a family of four children born between 1942 and 1954: Nicholas C., Dionis C., Sarah L. and Lydia S.