Translated material
Bodan Chandra with Sir Arthur
In the summer of 1930, a young graduate of the University of Madrasse, Sobramanyan Chandrakar, who received a scholarship to prepare a dissertation in Cambridge, sailed from India to England. The journey was long, so Chandrakar had enough time to solve his problem for a long time - how to behave as a star would behave as its fuel is burned out. While the star is alive, radiation can withstand the striving to compress its gravitational strength, but it is worth the nuclear reactions to stop, as the radiation pressure disappears, and the star is completely in the power of gravity. What fate awaits her?
Skillfully applying his knowledge in the special theory of relativity and quantum statistics, Chandrakar established the famous limit, later named after him, the upper limit of the mass, in which the star can exist as a white dwarf (now it is believed that it is 1.44 masses of the sun). When the limit is exceeded, the fate of a neutron star awaits the luminary. The stars are much greater than the mass, as you know now, turn into black holes. But at that time, Chandrakar did not deal with black holes - their time had not yet come.
By the way, he could well draw knowledge in quantum statistics with his famous uncle - physics of Chandrakar Venkata Raman. While the young man sailed to England, the Nobel Committee collected papers to award his uncle of the award for 1930, so shortly after arriving at Cambridge, Chandrakar became the nephew of the Nobel laureate. The instructive story about why the opening made by the Raman did not receive the prize, the Soviet physicists Grigory Landsberg and Leonid Mandelstam, which established the same effect, could not be found in an interesting article by V. L. Ginzburg and I. L. Fabelinsky [1]. I highly recommend getting to know her, very informative for future Nobel laureates.
In Cambridge, Chandrakar continued to actively develop his ideas and met closely with the great Arthur Eddington, who often went to his office, and often they had lunch together, and also established good contact with another outstanding astrophysicist - professor Edward Miln. Unfortunately, Eddington had a scientific conflict with Miln, and just about white dwarfs and neutron stars. The essence of the conflict is now no longer important, but one of the statements of Eddington can be judged by the intensity of passions: “I have not read the last article by Professor Milna, because I do not think that there is a need. It would be absurd to believe that Professor Milna has at least a microscopic chance to be right. ”
The character of Sir Arthur was apparently not sugar. Colleagues were afraid of his harsh, although not always fair criticism. James Jeans, the one whose name named the Raley Law - jeans, once in desperation sent an open letter to the Observator magazine, where he wrote at the end: “I want to assure Professor Eddington, which would have brought me a great pleasure if he laid an end to our long -standing discord and stopped angrily and for no reason to attack my articles, as well as if he had become properly The way to refer to my work useful for him. ”
And the major Cambridge mathematician Godfrey Hardy recalled how he once saw Eddington on the run and asked if he was betting. Sir Arthur admitted that he once put on a horse, because he could not resist the temptation, since her name was jeans. "So what, she won?" “No,” Eddington answered with his characteristic sarcastic smile.
For the misfortune of Chandrakara, the results he received testified both in favor of the Eddington hypothesis and in favor of the Milna hypothesis. As a result, he turned out to be between the two lights-the fact that some of his conclusions proved their rightness, opponents considered it granted, but the fact that others confirmed the point of view of the opponent caused rejection among the other. The young graduate student found himself between the hammer and the anvil. But he did not doubt the correctness of his reasoning and the results, and therefore decided to submit them to the court of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The meeting at which Chandrakar was going to make a report was scheduled for January 1935, and, having received his program, he was surprised to see that immediately after him, Eddington would speak on a similar topic. They saw each other almost every day, but Eddington did not say a word about the topic of his report, and on a direct question, Chandrakar replied that this was a surprise. An Indian physicist could not forget about this surprise even 50 years later.
After the detailed report of Chandrakar (at the request of Sir Arthur, he was given half an hour instead of the usual 15 minutes) Eddington tried not to leave stone on the stone from his conclusions. He actually ridiculed the “Chandrakar’s limit” (although he was not called that then) and, having no significant arguments, simply proclaimed: “I don’t know if I will be able to leave this meeting alive, but I argue that there is no such thing as a relativistic degenerate electronic gas.” (It was on its existence that the whole argument of Chandrakar was built.) About the limit, when the star could turn into a neutron star or into a white dwarf, he responded like this: “A lot of things can happen to the star, but not that. I believe that there should be a general law of nature that would forbid the star to behave in such an absurd way! The Chandrakar formula follows from the unification of relativistic mechanics with a non -nobility quantum theory. Such an alliance seems to me sinful. "
Chandrakar was crushed. One of his idols, who knew very well about his results, seeing him almost every day, did not tell him a private manner, but decided to destroy him publicly, in front of all members of the royal astronomical society. The blow was strong and below the waist. The authority of Eddington was so great that some young graduate student could not hope to defeat him. But Chandrakar decided not to give up.
One of the well-known scientists was needed who could check his equations and either point out a mistake or confirm his case. One word of Niels Bora, or Wolfgang Pauli, or Dirac fields would be enough to justify and whitewash the young graduate student in the eyes of colleagues. Chandra immediately sent a letter to his long -standing acquaintance, a famous physicist, assistant Borus Leon Rosenfeld with a request to show his layout to the master. Rosenfeld soon answered, having stated the employment of Bor, who could not answer the letter himself - but assured that he had not found any mistakes in the conclusions of Chandrakar and completely did not understand the objections of Eddington.
All this very encouraged a young graduate student, but the support of his conclusions was given in a private letter, and he needed something more. He sent Rosenfeld the prints of Eddington articles criticizing his work, waiting for some public critical reviews. However, Rosenfeld advised him not to get involved in public confrontation with Eddington, hinting that this could damage Chandrakar, despite his innocence. Regarding the works of Eddington, Rosenfeld wrote: “I bravely read the articles of Eddington twice, and my previous opinion has not changed at all - this is complete nonsense.” Nevertheless, neither Bor, nor Rosenfeld, nor Pauli (who also got acquainted with the work of Chandrakar and the objections of Eddington and took the side of the young graduate student) were tended to speak with public refutes the views of the leader of the British astronomers. They discouraged the fact that we are talking about astrophysicist, and they, they say, are not specialists in it, so they did not apply to speak about this.
The statement of another well -known English astrophysicist and cosmologist William McCry is interesting and later: “I am ashamed that I did not try to get to the bottom of the argumentation of Eddington. If it were not Eddington, but someone else, I would undoubtedly try to figure out in more detail. ” Apparently, others reasoned under the influence of the authority of the great Englishman. In the evening of the same ill -fated day, Chandra had dinner with one of the Cambridge astronomers, which was present on his report. Dinner passed in complete silence. The senior colleague did not encourage a young graduate student any word or a single gesture, making it clear that it was better not to remember the mistakes. And Miln, whom Chandra soon escorted to the station, was delighted. The argumentation of Eddington, in the fairness of which he did not doubt, implicitly confirmed the correctness of his own ideas. Miln also did not find the words of encouragement for a stunned and crushed Chandra. Such a blow at the very beginning of a career! [2]
In this situation, Chandrakar reasoned like this: “Either until the end of the days I will have to fight, defending my case, or the change of research. I decided-I’ll write a book with the presentation of my results and take care of something else. ” So he did. The book was published shortly after the defense of the dissertation [3].
Despite this unexpected and unpleasant incident, Sir Arthur Chandra continued to maintain good relations. It seems that Eddington did not see anything special in his behavior, following the ancient credo: Amicus Plato , Sed Magis Amica Veritas . They occasionally met, and after the Chandrakar move to the States in 1937, they corresponded until the death of Eddington in 1944. Letters of Eddington are imbued with warmth and humor. Chandra answered him in the same end and spoke about Sir Arthur as the largest scientist and decent person [4].
In 1983, almost fifty years after his opening he made, the Nobel Physics Prize for the theory of evolution of massive stars was awarded Subramanyan Chandrakar. In 1995, he died. Four years later, NASA brought to orbit the space X -ray observatory of his name. Designed for work for five years, she worked more than fifteen. Thanks to her, data were obtained confirmed by many theoretical results of Chandrakar [5].
How can one not recall Einstein’s statement: “Blind faith in authorities is the main enemy of truth.”
1. Ginzburg V. L., Fabelinsky I. L. Once again to the history of the discovery of combination scattering of light // Tribune "Success of Physical Sciences". No. 16. < Ufn.ru/tribune/gin_fab.pdf >
2. Kamershwar C. Wali, Chandrasekhar vs. Eddington - An Unticipated Confrontation // Phys. Today. 1982. 35 (10). P. 33.
3. Chandrasekhar S. an Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. New York, Dover, 1939.
4. Chandrasekhar S., Eddington. The Most Distinguished Astrophysicist of His Time. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
5. Official website: http://chandra.harvard.edu/