Subrahmanya
Chandrasekhar, F.R.S
By PURASU BALAKRISHNAN
Chandrasekhar is in the company of Ramanujan and
Raman. He has something other than his genius and the fellowship of the Royal
Society in common with them. Like Ramanujan, he was a fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge–a distinction, the sacred precincts of which are narrow.
With Raman he has a closer connection; they belong to the same family. This,
perhaps, is an irrelevant observation in an impersonal study of Chandrasekhar,
but is of interest to the biographer, and is a matter of pride to the country.
For the glamour and romance of the feudal age is not yet dead; and one gets a
nostalgic sense of those days of hot patriotic pride in the contemplation of
great and glorious families, like those of the Pitts and the Haldanes and the
Huxleys of England, or those of the Nehrus and the Tagores and
Raman-cum-Chandrasekhar of India.
Chandrasekhar’s father, Subrahmanya Ayyar, is one
of the numerous sons of India whose talents are caught up in official life–the
same Kabandha1 which tried, although unsuccessfully, to swallow up
his brother Sir C. V. Raman. Subrahmanya Ayyar’s relative failure was worthy of
a Great Spirit, imbued with high ideas of social responsibility in the handing
down of a proud inheritance. A retired Accountant-General, he is a violinist of
repute, an authority on Carnatic Music responsible for a pioneering
mathematical study of it, and is the author of several sketches of our social
and domestic life. Chandrasekhar has a rare blending of many qualities other
than intellectual; and in these we behold in him his mother–a woman who, when
she was bed-ridden with a consuming disease, gave consent to sending him away
from her side to sail beyond the seas, knowing well that she would die before
his return. And the star of Chandrasekhar led him on, lighting clearly and
brightly an unswerving path before him, as stars illumine to few among mankind.
He was born in Lahore, in the Punjab, where his
father was then employed, on 19th October 1910. But he belongs to
the Cauvery-watered Tamil district of Tanjore. More specifically, he hails from
the village of Mangudi, famous in the Tamil land for its stalwarts and for the
unbending tenacity of purpose of its children. His primary and lower secondary
education was entirely attended to by his parents. There was an atmosphere of
mathematical studies at home even from the time of his grandfather. The library
consisting of books like Salmon’s ‘Conic Sections’, Hardy’s Pure Mathematics’,
Bocher’s ‘Algebra’, Boole’s ‘Differential Equations’, Burnside and Panton’s,
‘Theory of Equations’ contributed not a little to the formation of a early
aptitude in young Chandrasekhar for mathematics While still an under graduate
of eighteen at Presidency College, Madras, he undertook original investigations
in Astrophysics; and his papers were published in “The Indian Journal of
Physics”, “The Proceedings of “the Royal Society of London”, “The Physical
Review” of America and in “The Philosophical Magazine.” He took his Master’s
degree with the highest distinction, scoring record marks in the history of the
University. Educational circles in Madras took notice when in 1930, a
scholarship was specially offered to him to prosecute his further researches in
England; and he sailed from Bombay that year, on the first of August.
Of the young days of eager, striving idealism,
before he left for England, I retain a few, but vivid, memories. The first
picture of those years which comes before me is our walking together along the
Marina, of an evening, he with quick long strides, I keeping up with him
somehow, drinking in the breeze like a horse, (I should add, a diminutive one)
and receiving his few words with silent assent and admiration. Those words were
few indeed–and none in the grand style–but they created around us a regaling
atmosphere within that of the breezy sea shore. He loved the beach of Madras
greatly. I remember how, when he had the privilege of enjoying a car-drive
along the Marina with Prof. Heisenberg of Germany (a Nobel-prizeman) who at
that time visited Madras, Chandrasekhar told his mother exultantly that the
celebrated professor had been charmed with the beauty of the Madras beach to
the point of enthusiasm. This little event occurred when Chandrasekhar was a
student in the Honours Class–the date, precisely was 14th October, 1929; and
like some of the little events in great men’s lives, I imagine, this personal
contact with the foreign physicist had a great inspiring influence on him at
that time. For the name of Heisenberg was often on Chandrasekhar’s lips.
“Heisenberg” he told me once, “can be compared only with Einstein.” And again,
“What a genius! And when so young, he has flashed across the scientific world
with his meteor-like brilliance!” Chandrasekhar came into contact with another
great foreign scientist during his College course; and that was Prof. Arnold
Sommerfeld of Germany. By no means were these the first influences in
Chandrasekhar’s life. For he told me once laughingly, how, as a school-boy, he
used to go to the each to be alone, and there prostrate himself devoutly on the
sands, with the prayer, “Oh God, may I be like Newton!” “...What days they
were!” he added to me wistfully after a moment.
This native wistfulness of his nature became
emphasised by his prolonged exile from his country. His mother’s death, less
than a year after he left home, affected him greatly. But his mind was made of
the stern stuff of discipline. One year after another, he laid them in turn at
the anvil of his work. In Cambridge where he worked under Professors Fowler,
Dirac and Milne, he was almost immediately recognized with the award of the
“Sheep-Shanks Prize” for astrophysical research. In the vacation he ran up to
the Gottingen University to work under Prof. Max Born; and shortly afterwards,
left Cambridge again to Copenhagen to work under Prof. Neils Bohr. Soon we find
him in Belgium, delivering a course of six lectures on “Problems of Stellar
Structure” at the Leige University. Back again at Cambridge, which he loves, he
is elected a fellow of Trinity College. Within a year–in 1934–he is called away
again–this time to Leningrad and Moscow; to Leningrad where he delivers two
lectures in German at the Pulkovo Observatory; to Moscow where he attends the
Astronomical Conference and delivers a lecture on “The Problem of the Stellar
Atmospheres”. Next year (1935) he attends on invitation the Conference of
International Astronomical Union at Paris. Meanwhile the stream of his research
flows to “The Proceedings of the Royal Society and to the “Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society” where his cargoes regularly appear. Now and
again, in the midst of this hectic activity, the moods of his pensive mind
assert themselves in a way that reminds us of a man in another sphere of work,
Jawaharlal Nehru. At about this time (26th June, 1935) Chandrasekhar writes to
me from Cambridge:
“It is ages since I heard from you...For the first
time in months I feel home sick. I shall return surely before June next
year–that is, in less than a year! How I look forward to it! I shall be
different, and so will the others be. Six years! How long! You see, I can
hardly imagine how things are at home. Memory fails, not because I cannot
recollect, but because memory recalls what is no more. Whenever I think of
home, the scene that almost always appears before me is mother lying on the
easy-chair in front of the house–I do not know why I always recollect her in a
red saree…All gone...”
Again he rushes back to work. He is invited as a
visiting lecturer to two American Universities. He crosses the Atlantic on 30th
November 1935 on board the “Brittanic.” Two days before his departure from
England he writes to me:
“I am going to Harvard as a visiting lecturer on
Cosmic Physics…Do please write to me during your Christmas holidays,
particularly as I shall appreciate letters from home, when away from my second
home at Cambridge–if you understand what I mean–I love Cambridge!”
At Harvard he delivers a course of ten lectures;
and from there he writes to me (on 7th January, 1936):
“Harvard is not very different from Cambridge. To
people here, especially those at the Observatory, are very kind and considerate
to me, and that helps me a great deal, for I miss Cambridge. One always misses
something. In any case, at Cambridge–one does not miss Cambridge!”
He leaves Harvard on 7th march for the Yerkes
Observatory of the Chicago University where again he delivers a course of
lectures. Then he sails back to England, and on board the steamer, relaxing
from his work, he writes to me (on 23rd March, 1936):
“I was planning to reply to your earlier letter
from the boat...As things stand, it is more than probable that I return home
for some weeks during the months of July, August and September...You might know
that I have more or less decided to accept an invitation from the University of
Chicago to join the Yerkes Observatory as a Research Associate. It is a fairly
good position, and it will be of great value to me personally to be attached to
one of the really great observatories of the world. I visited Chicago and
Yerkes about two weeks ago. I had a very enjoyable time at Yerkes. The Yerkes
Observatory is situated on the bank of a beautiful lake–Williams Bay–and behind
it are wild woods–a truly inspiring place. Dr. Struve, the Director, was very
nice, and the prospects are altogether fair….So it does seem that we are to
work out our lives purposes in distant countries….Perhaps I am selfish. But
science has the traditions only of itself, while art is true in only so far as
it weaves human forces in a network of nature–especially of one’s own country.
Perhaps I am too sweeping, but I am having in my mind Turgenev and Tolstoy. To
say this, however, is not to deny the international appeal of really great
literature.”
I give this fairly long extract from his letter for
two reasons: It is the announcement from the very source, of the origin of his
connection with the Yerkes Observatory of the Chicago University, where he now
occupies the chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics (He received a similar
invitation from the Harvard University, of which, however, he did not avail
himself). Secondly, in the above extract, we find the blending of the
scientific and the literary cultures, so characteristic of Chandrasekhar.
He bids good-bye to Chicago for a while. Soon he is
back at Cambridge, clearing up arrears, putting things in order, and
packing–for home at last, for India–after six years–for just a breathing
space–for just a marrying space.
He sailed from Genoa, on 31st July 1936, and
arrived at Bombay, on 12th August. He married Sri Lalitha whom he had known as
a student in the Physics Honours Class of Presidency College–she was one year
his junior–on 11th September, and left again for England with her on
17th October.
This stay of two months in India, in itself short,
divided between his travelling from one place to another–Bombay, Poona, Nagpur,
Madras, Bangalore and Calcutta, being the places I can recollect–and the
celebration of his marriage at Tiruchanur, appears but as an interlude between
two exiles. His Destiny calls him away again to a far-off land and faithfully
he follows it. On the way he stops at Cambridge, but he is bound to America. On
board the “Laconia” he writes to me (on 8th December 1936): “I have had a fearfully
busy month at Cambridge and I shan’t feel really happy until I finally settle
at Yerkes. Meantime the voyage gives me a brief respite…..”
So to fresh fields and pastures new! (But I have
reason to believe that he will not like this expression)…..In India, then in
England, then in America–thus his life of enlightened, intellectual asceticism
has divided itself to this moment. To dwell on his scientific work, much as I
would like it, I am not competent. My kingdom is over trifles. So let me think,
for a while over the short Indian interlude of 1936.
One event which certainly was not a trifle happened
then. It was his marriage. Some years later–it was in the fall of 1939–I
happened to meet Dr. L. A. Ramdas, Meteorologist, several times in Poona. One evening
he stood looking at Chandrasekhar’s marriage photograph for some time and then
turned to me with the remark, “So history has repeated itself.” “How?” I asked
him, although I had understood his meaning–he was referring to the marriage of
Sir C. V. Raman, and implying that both Raman and Chandrasekhar had married
women of their own choice. “Very few amidst us,” he explained, “will have the
courage to choose a girl for themselves. It is breaking the custom. Raman did
it and Chandrasekhar did it…..”
To go back to 1936, I knew that Chandrasekhar had
almost decided to marry Sri Lalitha. But there was another an educated,
cultured Brahmin lady, speaking a different language, who cherished the idea of
marrying Chandrasekhar and was on friendly terms with his sisters. I felt sorry
for her, and put in a word for her to him. I told him, “Why don’t you at least
see her and then decide? After all, I think, you will appreciate her feeling,
as she has been drawn to you across the barrier of language.” He paused thoughtfully
for a while and then said, “No....No....Marriage is not just picking of an item
from a menu card.” Still I wanted to press her claims and so I rejoined, “Yes,
it is–to some extent.” He lapsed into a short silence. “Yes, I admit it,” he
returned at last. “But there are various considerations. For a long time I have
thought of Lalitha as my wife….and the thinking of months cannot be brushed
aside.” “Yes, I know,” I replied, “You’ll decide the matter yourself. My only
idea was that you shouldn’t give up Miss–without due consideration.” “Of course
not,” he agreed. After a long while–we were walking on the beach road in the
dark–he observed (I thought I detected some bitterness in his voice), “The
relation between a man and a woman, I think, can never be as perfect as between
a man and a man–such as, for example, exists between you and me. We don’t
demand anything from each other and there is perfect understanding between us.
But it is different in the case of a man and a woman. One always demands something
from the other. The relationship is never ideal....” Here was a literary man
talking–a D. H. Lawrence–a dreamer–and a scientist of the highest type–for the
highest endeavors of Man are never far from each other.
I shall tarry a little longer over the Indian
interlude. For once I follow him to America, I shall be lost on the fields of
science, so truly foreign to me.
I remember on two evenings our early years were
born again as we walked on the Marina. He was a recognised scientist, he had
shot into the Indian sky like a meteor shall say, like Prof. Heisenberg in the
German sky, with due apologies to both the professors, of whose work I know
nothing. But I saw walking beside me, an earnest, eager student, thinking only
in terms of the pursuit of knowledge, warmed immediately by the mention of any
high endeavour in any sphere, persuading me, without patronizing me, to think
highly of myself. Truly here is the seed of greatness, I thought. For other
people are rarely warmed so; they always try to look big themselves and to make
the others look small....And I reflected how the preparation of years had only
brought him and me closer together in spirit. For it had made our comradeship
abstract, shorn of every disfigurement of concreteness, lifting it into the ideal,
lonely world of communication by letters.
Although I have mentioned the important event of
his marriage I shall not forgive myself if, in the account of this interlude, L
pass over a comparatively trifling incident–his visit to the widow of the late
Ramanujan. He and I went together to her little lodgings in one of the dark,
dingy, by-lanes of Triplicane. Later she called at his house and he introduced
her to his sisters and even succeeded in making that very shy lady feel at
home. He told her how the greatest professors across the seas reverenced the
memory of her late husband as that of a guru, a great master. “The other
scientists here,” he told her, “are worth only the dust on his feet.” He
informed her that one of the professors in England was writing a book on
Ramanujan and to illustrate it a good photograph of Ramanujan was necessary.
All the available photographs of him were disappointing. Could she help in the
matter? No, it was a pity, she had no photograph of her husband with
her….However….yes….she had with her his passport, and in that there was a
photograph of him. Chandrasekhar eagerly replied that he would have a look at
it. She was escorted home in his father’s car. He too went with her and got the
passport from her. Hurrah! The small passport photograph of Ramanujan was a
find! What one beheld there was truly a rare and great spirit! But why that
stamp of deep suffering–even spiritual agony–set on those mild beautiful eyes,
and those almost twitching lips, pressed together as though to secure an
outward calmness on the countenance?
When Chandrasekhar left India he entrusted the
passport to me, asking me to take copies of the photograph to be sent to him,
and then to return the passport to her. When I had carried out his instructions
(keeping however one copy of the photograph for me) he wrote to me from
Williams Bay (op 18th October 1937): “Your letter and also Ramanujan’s
photographs. Thanks very much for sending them. I think it extremely fortunate
that we arranged to have this–really the first–fairly good photograph of
Ramanujan. I feel it will become the ‘official’ one as Hardy will probably
publish it in his book on Ramanujan.” Years later, on 19th July 1942, he writes
to his father, “I was interested to know that you have read Hardy’s ‘A
Mathematician’s Apology”. I was also enthusiastic over it. Incidentally, have
you seen his book on Ramanujan–a book in the Cambridge University Series–a
companion to Ramanujan’s collected papers? In Hardy’s book on Ramanujan there
is a frontispiece photograph of Ramanujan–a photograph which is, in a sense, my
discovery–though Balakrishnan had a lot to do with it.”
The two above mentioned letters, I find, have taken
me, without any warning to America.
America proved a grateful and congenial home to
Chandrasekhar. The high estimate in which his colleagues at the Yerkes
Observatory and elsewhere in that country held him was demonstrated repeatedly
by them. Rejoined the Observatory as a Research Associate in January 1937.
Shortly afterwards he was promoted as an Assistant Professor of Astrophysics.
Soon he was given the status of Associate Professor; and in July 1943, he was
further promoted to a full professorship in the University. His papers and
those of his collaborators became a regular feature of the “Astrophysical
Journal.” He was recognized, in the words of an American astronomer, as “one of
the leading authorities in the field of galactic dynamics”, and he became an
integral part of the progress of Astronomy in America.
But, now and again, moments of weary wistfulness
broke in upon him. He writes to me on 22nd June 1937: “I hardly know what to
write about. Here, at Williams Bay, it is quiet and there is nothing except the
routine of the astronomers–the delivering of lectures, the writing of papers,
the shelving of reprints, the partaking in colloquia…..sometimes the
exhilaration of having found something new, sometimes the saddening effect of
realising one’s own shortcomings relative to the giants, sometimes the cold
indifference of deadened feelings……Still one gets out of these moods to one’s
work of calculations, discussions, papers, correspondence, etc……”
And so back to work, in January 1939, his first
book entitled, “An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure” appeared as
a monograph, issued by the University of Chicago Press. The only fact which is
clear to me from this “Introduction” is that it contains more than five hundred
pages, all dotted over with mathematical symbols, functions and equations like
the sky with the stars, constellations, and the Milky Way; but to the interior
of these, which I dare say must be exciting to the astronomers, I find myself a
stranger. But again, no, not, so, very completely–for I am able to perceive
that his own contributions to the subject have been incorporated in the book.
He writes to me (on 30th July 1938) “I am seeing my book through the press. It
is the first substantial thing I have done.” And so “the uneventful life of the
astronomer,” as he describes it in one of his letters to me, proceeds, one
should say, at a fast pace. He is invited to take part in the opening of the
Macdonald Observatory at Texas in May 1939 and in the symposium on Galactic
Structure. And again there is a far-flung invitation to him from Paris to
attend the International Astronomical Conference to be held from 17th to 20th
July 1939. On board the “S. S. Champlain” he writes to me (on 17thJune 1939):
“First, however, to explain my co-ordinates: The
time co-ordinate is already noted on page 1. As for the space co-ordinate–I am
in mid-Atlantic en-route to England. The official object of my visit is
to attend a conference in Paris in the middle of July. My real object, however,
is to get away from work–to be on a vacation! I am leaving my wife behind at
Yerkes. Parenthetically I may add that our finances would not have permitted
our travelling together–indeed would not have permitted my travelling either,
but for the generosity of a French Foundation who have persuaded themselves
into the belief that my presence at the conference is worth £ 600.”
The strenuousness of his intellectual life at
Yerkes is described to me in the same letter by way of an apology for his delay
in replying to me:
“An atmosphere of urgency–urgency to prepare two
long lectures a week on a topic I am learning myself; urgency to write an
over-grown investigation on Stellar Dynamics (a paper which incidentally is the
longest I have written so far–it will cover 150 pages of the ‘Astrophysical
Journal’); urgency to look into the doctorate thesis of two students who are
not very bright; urgency to prepare conventionalized papers to two symposia;
and finally urgency to look after and entertain a guest (my long-standing
friend and teacher, Prof. Milne)–you will admit, this is hardly conducive to
write a letter of understanding.”
So runs to uneventful life of this astronomer,
broken now and again by trips to other places–there again to deliver lectures.
He is invited as a visiting professor to the Institute for Advanced Study
School of Mathematics, Princeton, New Jersey to lecture on Stellar Dynamics for
three months in 1941. This affords him not a little excitement. He writes to
his father (on 3rd October 1941):
“It (the Institute) is a terrifying place. To be in
the same institute as Enstein, Weyl, Paulie and others is a privilege, but
terrifying all the same.”
Back in Yerkes, he sits down at what is, no doubt,
his second “substantial thing”. I refer to his book, “Principles of Stellar
Dynamics”, published by the University of Chicago Press in June, 1942. Reviewing
this book, an American astronomer writes: “In the new volume he (Chandrasekhar)
has blended his own researches and those of others in a well-rounded book,
which should, for many years to come, be “must” reading for every prospective
student of galactic structure and dynamics...This book should exert a profound
influence on the future developments in the field of galactic dynamics. I can
recommend its study unreservedly to newcomers in the field and to those who
already have a passing acquaintance with its problems. The experts can profit
from reading it. If I were stranded in a far off prison-camp where I would be
allowed one book, I would ask for Chandrasekhar’s volume. I am sure that per
ounce of paper it would provide the most stimulation for continued research in
theoretical astronomy.”
A month after the publication of this treatise
comes a fresh recognition from his second home. He is awarded the Sc.D. degree
of Cambridge (in July 1942). It is the harbinger of his fellowship of the Royal
Society. But at this happy moment he feels sad. He writes to his father (on
3rdJuly 1942):
“Life has played strangely with me. All those whom
I have loved and love have lived far apart, and my feelings have remained
strangely unreciprocated, even as all your feelings for me needs must appear
unreciprocated. Living apart, so long, so far away as I do, memory and
imagination alone give me contact with life–the life of love and
understanding….What have I done with life? I have sacrificed it for Science–so
it seems. And now with the War on, the sacrifice does not seem worth-while.”
His third monograph, “Stochastic Problems in
Physics and Astronomy” appeared in the “Review of Modern Physics”, published by
the American Physical Society in January 1943. An Indian reviewer observes of
this work, that “it establishes links between the problems of Stellar Astronomy
and those arising in colloid chemistry and is a remarkable effort in scientific
synthesis.”
In December 1942, the New York Academy of Sciences
crowned his work, “New Methods in Stellar Dynamics” by the award of the Cressy
Morrison Prize. This last work affords us an instance of the artist’s
conscience of Chandrasekhar which guides him in his scientific writings. He
states in the preface, dated July 1943, “Since the original version of this
paper was submitted to the New York Academy of Sciences in September 1942, the
subject has advanced along several directions. The author is therefore greatly
indebted to the Council of the Academy for permission to drastically revise and
recast the entire article.”
The Indian meteor is trailing in the American sky.
The people at home, one supposes, do not have the telescopic vision to see its
brilliance, although they vaguely realize its existence. The local celebrities
in diverse fields fill their view. But–to vary the metaphor–Chandrasekhar leans
out of the distant bars of America and gazes at India sorrowfully and lovingly.
The spirit of loneliness has descended upon the exile–that most mellow of all
spirits. He writes to me on 28th May 1942:
“I can hardly write coherently...But there is one
thing definite that I have wanted to know, persistently, increasingly, since
the War came to India this year. How does it affect you–your hopes and
feelings–your attitude–your life? How are our friends? and relatives? Is there
courage and optimism or fear and defeatism? You see, one pays a terrible price
for living in strange, foreign lands. You cease to be yourself and you vainly
try to be anything else. At home nowhere, a stranger everywhere. A strange
intoxication comes over you. You live as in a dream, you work as in a dream,
you become inhuman. You live in proportion to your ability to share, and in
your inability to share you lose contact with life...I do not know if I make
myself clear. The fact that I am an Indian gives me a strange feeling; and I
feel all the more strange for being in America. This is a frank confession of
my abnormal, unearthly feeling. For one thing I hunger; what are the things
which affect you and all those whom I love in this crisis of our times? As an
artist, you must sense the throbbing pulse of our times. Would that you could
communicate with me…”
The above extract, with its utter sincerity and
piercing poignancy, reminds us of some of the passages in Jawaharlal Nehru’s
Autobiography and, further, reveals a clear, scientific mind analyzing a
psychological state.
Again, nine months later, on 2nd March 1943, he
writes to me, while accepting the dedication of a book of mine to him:
“I wish I knew how to thank you or tell you how
much this means to me...At a time like the present, when our country is going
through the birth-pangs of a new era, it is only sensitive artists like you who
can feel the pulse of the new life germinating, and inaugurate the renaissance
in the new country which India will be tomorrow.”
A Turgenev might have written this, elucidating his
conception of Art. Chandrasekhar continues:
“When will that free India be, when you and I can
strive after our ideals, proud of our independence, proud of our leaders, and
creating in our midst the heritage of tomorrow? I cannot help feeling that out
of all this suffering and frustration, out of all the multitude of injuries
inflicted on us, we shall all gain a new stature with a newly won confidence,
courage and self-respect. And if we can have this faith, a faith which has
nourished our greatest men, why can’t we find inspiration in our very
misfortunes and strive after what surely will be the pride of future
generations?
Chandrasekhar is not only a scientist. He is a poet
by temperament. A man of great intellectual and cultural stature, confined by
the bent of his genius to his scientific mission, he feels the subjection of
our country acutely. That is the tragedy of India. And his stay in foreign lands
has mellowed his spirit. Against this background one can understand his liking,
among other authors, for Chekhov and Turgenev. Some passages in his letters and
some of his remarks in his conversation are of the wistful Chekhov mood. He
knows Tolstoy to be a giant among literary men–‘Anna Karenina’ is one of his
favorites–but Turgenev also claims his devotion. Naturally because we are under
subjection, and Turgenev, with his pictures of patriotic Russia, thrills us.
Chandrasekhar admires Turgenev for making the Russian nation, with the various
movements and currents swaying it, live in his novels. Chandrasekhar told me
once–and who will not agree with him?–that just now we in India are in need of
such novelists. This literary culture gives Chandrasekhar a unique place among
our scientists. Indeed–with due apologies to the astrophysicist–if the planets
had danced in a slightly different fashion at the time of his birth, we may
have had in Chandrasekhar a great man of letters, gathering into himself and making
eloquent the unspoken voice of the India of today.
VI
But the stars have contrived to make him study
them. The astronomer’s “uneventful life” follows its smooth course and its
smooth deviations. He attends the first National Conference on Physics held in
Puebla, on the invitation of the Government of Mexico. The paper which he reads
there on “Dynamical Friction” is perhaps his first which is given great
publicity by the “Science Service” of America. His most popular summing of his
own researches is his address, “Galactic Evidences for the Time Scale of the
Universe”, given before the Philosophical Society of Washington on 4th December
1943, and printed later in the journal “Science” in the issue of 18th February
1944.
The brilliance of the meteor is suddenly made
visible for a moment to India. In March 1944, comes a message from Reuter that
Chandrasekhar is elected to the Royal Society of London. Unassumingly he takes
his place alongside his “friend and teacher,” Prof. Milne of England and his
uncle, Prof. Raman of India, still respectfully saluting Prof. Neils Bohr of
Copenhagen whom he venerates as the greatest scientist-philosopher of Europe,
and a little embarrassed, I fancy, to find himself the recipient of the
sam-signal recognition (for an Indian) as Ramanujan whom he considers to be a
genius without peer, with the exception of Einstein. Strange to say, he shortly
afterwards complains in a letter that he is “fairly settling down to
middle-aged idleness”–because he is reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace and
“some novels of Virginia Woolf!” Notwithstanding this self.accusation, we find
him writing to his father on 19th March 1945:
“It is of the utmost importance for me that the
two books on which I am now working, “Stellar Atmospheres” for the University
of Chicago Press, and “Statistical Dynamics” for the Oxford University Press,
should be completed without interruption.”
Fortunate is the man to whom life is a perpetual
pursuit.
It would be pleasant for me to make this sketch
of Chandrasekhar complete by a brief technical or popular exposition of his
contribution to astrophysics, but it is beyond my understanding. To be ignorant
of his scientific work, however, does not rob me of my instinctive awareness of
his greatness. One knows Genius when one stands in its presence. It is, in this
respect, like beauty, whether it is acclaimed or not. And Chandrasekhar’s
genius is acclaimed by the whole scientific world.
And thus the even tenor of his life at the
Yerkes Observatory continues today. We, from India salute him and send him our
perennial greetings. Writing of him, I am reminded of the even tenor of the
life of that “happiest of poets,” Wordsworth; and I am tempted
to suggest that Chandrasekhar is the happiest of Indian scientists. America has
offered him both advantages and disadvantages. He is saved from social
obligations and domestic compromises, but he is bereft alike of the
compensations of home; he is in a foreign country but he is spared the ignoble
politics which unfortunately entwine and poison every activity in the
motherland, even in the ‘highest’ spheres, where one should least expect it.
Chandrasekhar is an internationalist in spirit,
if ever there was one. We make a distinction between Gandhi and Nehru saying
that Gandhi is a nationalist and Nehru an internationalist. This distinction,
in the last analysis, is unprofitable. The one’s nationalism is as fruitful and
idealistic as the other’s internationalism. Indeed the pioneers, from the very
circumstance of their being pioneers, are nationalistic. A similar difference
we perceive between Raman and Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar writes to his father
on 19th February 1943:
“I was glad to read C. V. R’s (C. V. Raman’s)
Convocation address. I was in general agreement with his depreciation of the
craze for foreign degrees, but I think he is overlooking the obvious when he
says that those who have benefitted by going abroad would have “done infinitely
better” by staying at home. I wonder how he can explain Ramanujan. After four
years at Cambridge, and with Hardy, he (R) lived to become the greatest name in
Mathematics of this century. Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with
R’s life will accede that he would have died unknown and unwept, if he had
continued the last precious five years of his life in India. Again, in a
different plane, I can assert that I could not have done “infinitely better”
had I continued in India–I am sure to have done much worse. However, with his
larger thesis, that it is up to us Indians to improve our universities and
centres of education in India, I entirely agree. And, for my part, I hope that
one day I shall contribute my small measure to this development. But this is
looking too far ahead.…”
1 Monster in the Ramayana.