Lalitha Chandrasekhar

http://physics.uchicago.edu/events/chandra100/reception.html

Lalitha Chandrasekhar was born in Egmore, India, a suburb of Madras, on Oct. 15, 1910. She and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar were fellow students in the physics department at the University of Madras between 1927 and 1929. She received her B.A. honors degree in physics (the U.S. equivalent of a master’s degree) in 1930 and her Licentiate in Teaching degree in 1931 from the Lady Willingdon Training College in Madras. For a year, she taught physics, chemistry and mathematics at the National High School in Madras.

She married Subrahamyan Chandrasekhar on Sept. 11, 1936. Mrs. Chandrasekhar attended most of the lectures her husband delivered in various parts of the world during his long career. She shared a keen lifelong interest in music with her husband and would often sing to him. Mrs. Chandrasekhar also plays the vina, an Indian stringed instrument, and the flute.

Mrs. Chandrasekhar has written several essays about her husband, including "My Everlasting Flame" (in S. Chandrasekhar, The Man Behind the Legend, edited by K. Wali, Imperial College Press 1997) and "Our Song" (in Black Holes and Relativistic Stars, edited by R.M. Wald, University of Chicago Press, 1998). She also wrote the foreword to part II of Volume 7 of the Selected Papers of S. Chandrasekhar (University of Chicago Press, 1997).