Chandrasekhar vs. Eddington—an unanticipated confrontation

OCT 01, 1982

For many years astronomers did not accept the validity of a young scientist’s application of the new physics because it was ridiculed by a preeminent astronomer.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2914790

Kameshwar C. Wali

Stellar evolution has for many years been one of the most exciting fields of research in astronomy and astrophysics. In the early 1930s, a young astrophysicist named Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar certainly felt this excitement when in his theoretical work he found a fundamental parameter that determines the destiny of stars. By appling both relativity and the new quantum mechanics, Chandrasekhar found a critical mass, below which stars end up as white dwarfs, and above which, as later work would show, they end up as neutron stars or black holes.

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References

1. See, for instance, S. Chandrasekhar, Am. J. Phys. 37, 577 (1969); https://doi.org/AJPIAS
S. Chandrasekhar, Observatory 92, 160 (1972); https://doi.org/OBSEAR
and interview of S. Chandrasekhar by S. Weart, AIP Niels Bohr Library, 1977, 162 pages.
2. R. H. Fowler, Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 87, 114 (1926).
3. S. Chandrasekhar, Phil. Mag. 11, 592, 594 (1931).
4. S. Chandrasekhar, Z. Astrophys. 5, 321 (1932). https://doi.org/ZEASAJ
Von Wilhelm Anderson and Edmund Clifton Stoner had independently considered relativistic effects on electron degeneracy. Their work implied the existence of a limiting mass. See, for example, E. C. Stoner, Phil. Mag. 9, 944 (1930). It was Chandrasekhar, however, who obtained a unique value for the critical mass by using the equation of state in conjunction with polytropic theory.
5. These and other excerpts are from conversations with Chandrasekhar.
6. Observatory 58, 37 (1935).https://doi.org/OBSEAR
7. Letter from W. H. McCrea, November 1979, in response to my request for his recollections and comments.
8. The ensuing excerpts are from correspondence between Chandrasekhar and Rosenfeld between January and July 1935.
9. S. Chandrasekhar, Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 91, 456 (1931);
S. Chandrasekhar, Astrophys. J. 74, 81 (1931).
10. S. Chandrasekhar, Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 95, 219 (1935).

More about the authors

Kameshwar C. Wali, Syracuse University, New York.