This is the first of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated.

Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.

Volume 1, Stellar Structure and Stellar Atmospheres, covers primarily the period 1930-40 and includes early papers on the theory of white dwarfs. In the Preface, Chandrasekhar explains the criteria for selection and provides historical background. Each subsequent volume will include a foreword by an authority on the topics covered.

This is the second of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated.

Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.

Volume 2 covers primarily the period 1940-50 and includes papers on the theory of radiative transfer and on the physics and astrophysics of the negative ion of hydrogen. Of particular note are Chandrasekhar's Gibbs Lecture to the American Mathematical Society in 1946 and his "Personal Account" presented at a conference at Erevan in the U.S.S.R. in 1981. A foreword by T. W. Mullikin, a distinguished scholar in the area of radiative transfer, and an author's note provide a historical context for the papers.

This is the third of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated.

Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.

This volume is divided into four sections. The first, on dynamical friction and Brownian motion, includes papers written after Chandrasekhar published his 1942 monograph Principles of Stellar Dynamics. Also in this section is "Stochastic Problems in Physics and Astronomy," one of the most cited papers in the physics literature, as well as papers written jointly with John von Neumann that have been given impetus to recent research. As Chandrasekhar notes, the papers in the second section, on statistical problems in astronomy, were influenced by Ambartsumian's analysis of brightness in the Milky Way. A third section on the statistical theory of turbulence addresses issues still unresolved in fluid dynamics, and the last section is devoted to hydromagnetic problems in astrophysics that are not discussed in Chandrasekhar's monographs.

This is the fourth of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated.

Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.

Volume 4 has three parts. The first, on plasma physics, includes joint work with A. N. Kaufman and K. M. Watson on the stability of the pinch, as well as a paper on Chandrasekhar's own approach to the topic of adiabatic invariants. Part 2 includes work with specific scientific applications of hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability not covered in his monograph on the subject. The final part contains Chandrasekhar's papers on the scientific applications of the tensor-virial theorem, in which he restores to its proper place Riemann's neglected work with ellipsoidal figures.

This is the fifth of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated.

Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.

Volume 5 covers all of Chandrasekhar's contributions to the general theory of relativity and relativity's astrophysical applications (except his research on black holes and colliding gravitational waves, which is covered in Volume 6). The major topics include the influence of general relativity on the pulsations and stability of stars; the back reaction of gravitational waves on their sources; and post-Newtonian approximations to general relativity and their astrophysical applications. In addition to research papers, the volume includes two 1972 lectures in which Chandrasekhar assessed the past, present, and future of relativistic astrophysics. The foreword by astrophysicist Kip S. Thorne is an absorbing, brief history of the field since 1961, capturing the atmosphere of the early research and clarifying Chandrasekhar's dominant role in it.

Chandrasekhar has never written a monograph synthesizing his research in relativistic astrophysics, and therefore this volume of his papers serves as a summary of that work for students and more senior researchers.

This is the first of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated.

Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.

In these selections readers are treated to a rare opportunity to see the
world through the eyes of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant
and sensitive scientists. Conceived by Chandrasekhar as a supplement to
his Selected Papers, this volume begins with eight papers he
wrote with Valeria Ferrari on the non-radial oscillations of stars. It
then explores some of the themes addressed in Truth and Beauty,
with meditations on the aesthetics of science and the world it examines.
Highlights include: "The Series Paintings of Claude Monet and the
Landscape of General Relativity," "The Perception of Beauty and the
Pursuit of Science," "On Reading Newton's Principia at Age Past
Eighty," and personal recollections of Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru,
and others.

Selected Papers, Volume 7 paints a picture of Chandra's universe,
filled with stars and galaxies, but with space for poetics, paintings,
and politics.

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 Nobel
Prize 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 Common Reader.

"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 Nobel
Prize 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 Common Reader.