Abstract:
S. Chandrasekhar, born on the 19th of October, 1910, was one of the outstanding astrophysicists of the twentieth century. His career was also unique in falling into distinct phases, each marked by substantial published work, culminating in a book. The very first phase, in which he derived the limiting mass for white dwarf stars, resulted in the Nobel Prize for physics after a fifty-year delay. This talk will review the bare details of his life and then give a feel for his contributions in each of the six phases.
About the Speaker:
Rajaram Nityananda obtained his PhD in physics from Bangalore University in 1977, working in areas of optics and crystallography at the Materials division of the National Aerospace Laboratory. At the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, he worked mainly on theoretical problems in astronomy relating to optics and dynamics until 2000. Then, for a decade, he worked at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Pune. He then taught undergraduate physics at IISER-Pune and the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. After moving to ICTS-TIFR in 2022, he continues to work on radio imaging and gravitational lensing.