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To many Indian Americans, Chandra offers special pride

"We could literally lift our head up, and say America has honored India in a befitting way," said a drama and theater student Sonya Thimmayya. "Next time someone speaks of snake charms and snake oil and bride burning, I will ask them if they have heard of Chandra X-ray Observatory."

A high schooler, Neil Shah, says he hopes an Indian American will emulate Chandrasekhar and win the Nobel. "If Chandra, who was born in India and had to fight many disadvantages could win the Nobel, the second and third generation Americans have every reason to aim for the highest honor in the scientific world," he said.

At NASA, top administrators and scientists recalled the contributions of Chandrasekhar.

"Chandrasekhar made fundamental contributions to the theory of black holes and other phenomena that the Chandra X-ray Observatory will study," said NASA administrator Dan Goldin. "His life and work exemplify the excellence that we can hope to achieve with this great observatory."

Chandrasekhar was born in Lahore where his father held a government job. A nephew of physics Nobelist, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Chandra received a BA in mathematics and physics from Presidency College in Madras, in 1930 and went to study in England on a government scholarship, obtaining a PhD in physics from Cambridge in 1933. He moved to the University of Chicago in 1937 and remained there until his death.

He became a US citizen about 20 years after he arrived in Chicago. It was not an easy decision to make, Chandrasekhar, a great admirer of the Mahatma, often told his friends and family members.

When Chandrasekhar started making an impact, scientists were just beginning to understand how a star worked, according to Eugene Parker, a long time colleague and friend.

"The things that are now taken for granted were considered very baffling. Chandra, who came towards the end of that phase, helped put together many of the pieces." While still a student in the 1930s, Chandrasekhar developed a theory that challenged the prevalent notion of the formation of 'white dwarfs,' Parker explained

"Most astrophysicists in those times believed that after burning up their fuel, stars collapsed into planet-sized entities that they referred to as white dwarfs," Parker continued. "However, through his calculations, Chandrasekhar proposed that only stars equivalent in size to the sun became dwarfs. If the mass of the star were greater than 1.4 times the sun, he claimed, the star would continue to collapse into an object of enormous density."

"Although he was publicly ridiculed for this -- especially by his idol, the British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington -- his theories form the basis for modern astrophysics: The critical mass he predicted is called the 'Chandrasekhar limit,' and the objects of infinite density are widely referred to as 'black holes.' This work led to his Nobel Prize nearly a half-century later."

Scientists and students at universities across the world today enthusiastically acknowledge Chanrasekhar's contributions.

"Chandra's work on the mass limit of white dwarfs really set the stage for our understanding of violent events in the evolution of stars," said Chicago astronomy professor Peter Vandervoort. "His work lays the foundation for the modern understanding of neutron stars and black holes that will come from the data collected by the Chandra Observatory."

The name was selected from among 6,000 entries submitted by students and teachers from all 50 states and 61 countries, according to NASA. Fifty-nine entries suggested the name Chandra; of those, two people, an Idaho student and a California physics teacher, won trips to see the Chandra Observatory launch.

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