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Chandrasekhar family

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The Chandrasekhar family is an Indian intellectual family. Several members of the family have achieved scientific distinction, notably in the field of physics. Two members of the family, Sir C. V. Raman and his nephew, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, were Nobel laureates in physics.

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First generation

  • C. V. Raman FRS, was a distinguished physicist whose achievements in the field of light scattering earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics. He discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the wavelengths of some of the deflected light change. This phenomenon, now known as Raman scattering, results from the eponymous effect.

    • Second generation

  • Venkatraman Radhakrishnan (son of C V. Raman) was a distinguished astrophysicist credited with expanding the field of radio astronomy and for research in pulsars, interstellar clouds and various celestial bodies.
  • Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar FRS (nephew of C V. Raman) was an Indian American astrophysicist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". His mathematical treatment of stellar evolution yielded many of the best current theoretical models of the later evolutionary stages of massive star and black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.

    • References

    Chandrasekhar family Wikipedia
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