Review - Empire Of The Stars
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Empire Of The Stars is a book about people, physics, rivalry, jealousy and to an extent motivation. Mostly it is a book about Subramaniam Chandrashekhar also known as Chandra. Chandra won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his lifetime work on Physics. Chandra always felt that the prize should have been about his earliest discovery related to White Dwarfs which he made on a voyage from India to England.
Other than Chandra the second most talked about person is Sir Aurthur Eddington. Eddington as he was known in physics circles was arguably one of the greatest scientist of modern times. Eddington changed the life of many connected to him for better or worse. Eddington’s impact on Chandra was profound. Chandra regarded him as inspiration but at the same time Chandra was disturbed for his entire life by Eddington. This was due to a paper presented by Chandra which he regarded as one of his finest papers. Eddington thought of it the other way and ridiculed Chandra in front of the most elaborate gathering of physicists of that time. After this Chandra felt de-motivated for his entire life and never could let go of what he called Eddington Ghost.
The book also talks about Chandra’s achievements in Physics, his contribution to the study of stars and most importantly what we know today as Chandra Limit. Chandra’s contribution to his field was enormous. NASA in his honour called one of their biggest telescopes Chandra X-ray Observatory. Together Hubble and Chandra telescopes have exposed more about the universe than we could ever imagine.
I enjoyed reading this book. Once in a while I like reading about physics, and astronomy. I will recommend this to anyone who enjoyed reading Brief History Of Time.
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