Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, better known as Chandra, was born in Lahore, British India, and later moved to the United States. His early work as a teenager led to the Chandrasekhar limit, which dictates the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. Apparently, stars, much like some of us, have their limits. He did not, however, develop a limit for how many times one can mispronounce his first name. (It's Soo-bra-MON-yan, for the record.)

Chandra was a prodigious talent, publishing papers while still in his teens and becoming a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, by age 20. He eventually settled at the University of Chicago, where he spent most of his career. One might say he had a stellar trajectory, leaving behind a black hole-sized void in the field of astrophysics when he passed.

His intellectual sparring with Sir Arthur Eddington over the existence of black holes is legendary, proving that even brilliant minds can have spirited disagreements – a concept utterly foreign to most online comment sections. Ultimately, Chandra's theories were proven correct, earning him a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. He was not Jewish, but his contributions to understanding the cosmos were, dare we say, universal.