Chandrasekhar limit: An elementary approach based on classical physics and quantum theory

In a brief article published in 1931,Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar made public an important astronomical discovery. In his article,the then young Indian astrophysicist introduced what is now known as the Chandrasekhar limit. This limit establishes the maximum mass of a stellar remnant beyond which the repulsion force between electrons due to the exclusion principle can no longer stop the gravitational collapse. In the present article,we create an elemental approximation to the Chandrasekhar limit,accessible to non-graduate science and engineering students. The article focuses especially on clarifying the origins of Chandrasekhar’s discovery and the underlying physical concepts. Throughout the article,only basic algebra is used as well as some general notions of classical physics and quantum theory.