P.C. Mahalanobis

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             P.C. Mahalanobis   A well-known Indian statistician and scientist, Mahalanobis is greatly popular for introducing new methods of sampling. His most significant contribution in the field of statistics was the 'Mahalanobis Distance'. Besides, he had also made pioneering studies in the field of anthropometry and had founded the Indian Statistical Institute.  Originally, the family of Mahalanobis belonged to Bikrampur, Bangladesh. As a child. Mahalanobis grew up in an environment surrounded by socially active refoemers and intellectuals. He had his initial education from Brahmo Boys School Calcutta. Further, he enrolled himself into Presidency College and got a BSc degree with specialisation in physics. In 1913, Mahalanobis left for England for ther stodies and came in contact with S. Ramanujan, the famous mathematician from India. After completion of his studies. he returned

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born on 19October 1910 in Lahore His father. Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya lyer was an officer in the Indian Audits and Accounts Department. His mother Sitalakshmi was a woman of high intellectual attainments. Sir CV. Raman the first Indian to get the Nobel Prize in science, was his paternal uncle Till the age of 12 Chandrasekhar was educated at home by his parents and private tutors. In 1922 at the age of 12 he attended the Hindu High School.

He joined the Madras Presidency College in 1925. Chandrasekhar passed his Bachelors (Honours) in physics in June 1930. In July 1930, he was awarded a Government of India scholarship for graduate studies in Cambridge, England and completed his PhD at Cambridge in the summer of 1933.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is best known for his discovery of what is known as the 'Chandrasekhar Limit. He showed that there is a maximum mass which can be supported against gravity by pressure made up of electrons and atomic nuclei. The value of this limit is about 1.44 times a solar mass. The Chandrasekhar Limit plays a crucial role in understanding the stellar evolution. If the mass of a star exceeded this limit, the star would not become a white dwarf but it would continue to collapse under the extreme pressure of gravitational forces. The formulation of the Chandrasekhar Limit led to the discovery of neutron stars and black holes. Depending on the mass, there are three possible final stages of a star-white dwarf, neutron star and black hole. 


Apart from the discovery of the Chandrasekhar Limit, major works done by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar includes: stellar dynamics, including the theory of Brownian motion (1938-43); the theory of radiative transfer, including the theory of stellar atmospheres and the quantum theory of the negative ion of hydrogen and the theory of planetary atmospheres, which again comprised the theory of the illumination and the polarization of the sunlit sky (1943-50); hydrodynamic and hydro magnetic stability, including the theory of the Rayleigh-BĂ©nard convection (1952-61); the equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, partly in collaboration with Norman R. Lebovitz (1961-68); the general theory of relativity and relativistic astrophysics (1962-71); and the mathematical theory of black holes (1974-83).Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was awarded (iointly with the nuclear astrophysicist W.A. Fowler) the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. He died on 21 August 1995.

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