Every modern explanation of how stars become white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes begins with a discovery made by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. In the 1930s, he calculated the maximum mass at which a white dwarf star can remain stable, a threshold now known as the Chandrasekhar Limit. The breakthrough transformed scientific understanding of stellar evolution and gravitational collapse and remains a cornerstone of modern astrophysics. Chandrasekhar received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983, and NASA later honored him by naming the Chandra X-ray Observatory in his memory.
