Nobel Prize in Physics, 1983 — for theoretical work on the structure and evolution of stars, including the calculation, made in 1930 on a steamer between Madras and Southampton at the age of nineteen, of the maximum mass a white dwarf can reach before collapse. The 'Chandrasekhar limit' is one of the foundational numbers in modern astrophysics, and the calculation it followed reshaped how scientists thought about stellar death, neutron stars, and eventually black holes. The University of Chicago, where Chandra spent his career from 1937 until his death in 1995, is the centre of gravity for half a century of American theoretical astrophysics for that reason. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory bears his name. So does the next generation of Indian-origin physicists who grew up reading him.