Chandrasekhar Centennial Symposium; Chicago, IL; October 16-17, 2010

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports travel to a scientific symposium to be held October 16 - 17, 2010 at the University of Chicago in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. A Nobel Prize winner, Chandrasekhar is best known for his earliest work showing that white dwarf stars cannot have a mass greater than the "Chandrasekhar limit," a result that plays a central role in current understanding of stellar evolution, supernovae, and gravitational collapse. After completing this work, Chandrasekhar went on, successively, to the analysis of stellar structure, stellar dynamics, radiative transfer, plasma physics, hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics, and equilibrium solutions for rotating bodies in Newtonian gravity. He then devoted most of the last thirty-five years of his life to research in general relativity, where he made major contributions to post-Newtonian analysis, the theory of black holes, and many other areas. The symposium will bring together internationally leading physicists and astrophysicists to put his work in perspective and elucidate many of the ramifications of his work in current research. The symposium should provide an excellent introduction to some key areas of research in general relativity and astrophysics for students and postdocs who participate. It may be a sufficiently "high profile" event to attract attention in the local, national, and international media, leading to greater interest by the broader public in the work of Chandrasekhar.