Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born in October of 1910 in Lahore, India (now Pakistan). He happened to be the nephew of the Indian Nobel Prize winner Chadrasekhara Venkata Raman. Like others, he was recognized early on in his life as having a great deal of potential in the area of science. In 1930, he graduated from the Presidency College in Madras, India with a B.A. in mathematics. He received a scholarship to study in England and studied at Cambridge where he made the acquaintance of Sir Arthur Eddington. He was awarded a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge in 1933. Soon after receiving his doctorate, he was made a fellow of Trinity College. He made ground breaking discoveries that were fiercely questioned by Eddington, but he was reassured behind the scenes by other prominent colleagues that he (Chandrasekhar) was in fact correct. He moved to the United States in 1936, and became a faculty member of the University of Chicago one-year later. He held this teaching position until his death. Chandrasekhar became a member of the Royal Society in 1944. He was always considered a fine teacher and mentor. He was tough yet kind, which always drew out the best qualities of his students. In 1962, he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. In 1966, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. Throughout his life, he published six different books including The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. In 1983, for his work on the critical mass of a white dwarf, his additions to the understanding of black holes, and long and distinguished career in astrophysics, Chandrasekhar was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar died on August 21, 1995 in Chicago, Illinois.

Chandrasekhar's most important contribution was his discovery of the upper bound for the mass of a white dwarf star. He presented this discovery to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1935. The premise for Chandrasekhar's discovery lay in the idea of relativistic electron degeneracy. The pressure that holds a white dwarf together is electron degeneracy. Hence, you can only squeeze electrons so close together due to their repellant-like charges. The critical mass of a white dwarf star was found by Chandrasekhar to be 1.4 times the mass of our Sun. This upper bound is now referred to as the "Chandrasekhar Limit." The theories helped to create modern astrophysics and to advance the study of not only white dwarfs but black holes as well. All of the observed white dwarfs fall below the Chandrasekhar Limit. Thus, the relativistic electron degeneracy theory is currently paramount. Chandrasekhar's work on black holes created the definition of it as being objects in the universe that have an infinite density. He helped to bring our understanding of black holes and astrophysics in general, to where we are today.

Chandrasekhar was one of the few scientists who was able to continue his rigorous research throughout most of his life while remaining on the forefront of the scientific community. Chandrasekhar continued his work until the end of his life which spanned nearly half a century.