"What a splendid book Reading it is a joy, and for me, at least, continuing reading it became compulsive. . . . Chandrasekhar is a distinguished astrophysicist and every one of the lectures bears the hallmark of all his work: precision, thoroughness, lucidity." Sir Hermann Bondi, "Nature"
The late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the NobelPrize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, including"The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes" and, most recently, "Newton's Principia for the...

This new and greatly revised edition of Professor Chandrasekhar's classic book Liquid Crystals (1977) presents a systematic and self-contained treatment of the physics of the different types of thermotropic liquid crystals--the three classical types, nematic, cholosteric and smectic, composed of rod-shaped molecules, and the newly discovered discotic type composed of disc-shaped molecules. The coverage includes a description of the structures of these four main types and their polymorphic modifications, their thermodynamical, optical and mechanical properties and their behavior under external...