"Chandra" is an intimate portrait of a highly private and brilliant man, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a Nobel laureate in physics who has been a major contributor to the theories of white dwarfs and black holes.
"Wali has given us a magnificent portrait of Chandra, full of life and color, with a deep understanding of the three cultures Indian, British, and American in which Chandra was successively immersed. . . . I wish I had the job of reviewing this book for the "New York Times" rather than for "Physics Today." If the book is only read by physicists, then Wali's devoted labors were in...

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar — known simply as Chandra throughout the scientific world — has become a legendary figure for his prolific contributions to physics, astrophysics, and applied mathematics. Before his death in 1995, Chandra had forbidden a memorial of the conventional sort, celebrating his life. This book, which contains some thirty articles by his former students, his associates, and his colleagues, is in a sense a memorial volume. It says little about Chandra's great scientific achievements, but shows his human side and the various facets of his brilliant...