A comprehensive summary of progress made during the past decade on the theory of black holes and relativistic stars, this collection includes discussion of structure and oscillations of relativistic stars, the use of gravitational radiation detectors, observational evidence for black holes, cosmic censorship, numerical work related to black hole collisions, the internal structure of black holes, black hole thermodynamics, information loss and other issues related to the quantum properties of black holes, and recent developments in the theory of black holes in the context of string theory.

Volume contributors: Valeria Ferrari, John L. Friedman, James B. Hartle, Stephen W. Hawking, Gary T. Horowitz, Werner Israel, Roger Penrose, Martin J. Rees, Rafael D. Sorkin, Saul A. Teukolsky, Kip S. Thorne, and Robert M. Wald.

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 vain."—Freeman Dyson, Physics Today

"An enthralling human document."—William McCrea, Times Higher Education Supplement

"A dramatic, exuberant biography of one of the century's great scientists."—Publishers Weekly

From White Dwarfs to Black Holes chronicles the extraordinarily productive scientific career of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, one of the twentieth century's most distinguished astrophysicists. Among Chandrasekhar's many discoveries were the critical mass that makes a star too massive to become a white dwarf and the mathematical theory of black holes. In 1983 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for these and other achievements.

Over the course of more than six decades of active research Chandrasekhar investigated a dizzying array of subjects. G. Srinivasan notes in the preface to this book that "the range of Chandra's contributions is so vast that no one person in the physics or astronomy community can undertake the task of commenting on his achievements." Thus, in this collection, ten eminent scientists evaluate Chandrasekhar's contributions to their own fields of specialization. Donald E. Osterbrock closes the volume with a historical discussion of Chandrasekhar's interactions with graduate students during his more than quarter century at Yerkes Observatory.

Contributors are James Binney, John L. Friedman, Norman R. Lebovitz, Donald E. Osterbrock, E. N. Parker, Roger Penrose, A. R. P. Rau, George B. Rybicki, E. E. Salpeter, Bernard F. Schutz, and G. Srinivasan.