Chandrasekhar and the Limits of Physics, Part 1: Triumph

The Helix Nebula, the glowing shell thrown off by a dying star, with a hot white dwarf at its heart. White dwarfs, and the 1.4 solar mass limit that governs them, were Chandrasekhar's breakthrough. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech / Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who as a teenager on an ocean voyage worked out that white dwarf stars have a maximum mass of 1.4 Suns. A tour of degeneracy pressure, the relativistic insight everyone else missed, and the number that would define his life.

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