Chandrasekhar family

Family tree

• R. Chandrasekhara Iyer, m. Parvati Ammal
• *Chandrasekhara Subrahmanyan Iyer, m. Sitalakshmi Iyer
• **Rajalakshmi, m.
• *** Uma, m. Parameswaran. Noted Indo-Canadian writer of South Asian-Canadian literature; former English professor at the University of Winnipeg.
• **Balaparvathi, m. Viswanathan
• *** V. Shanta
• **Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, m. Lalitha Doraiswamy
• **Vishwanathan
• **Balakrishnan
• **Ramanathan
• **Sarada
• **Vidya
• **Savitri
• **Sundari
• *Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, m. Lokasundari Ammal
• ** Venkatraman Radhakrishnan, m. Francoise-Dominique Barnard
• *** Vivek Radhakrishnan, m. Namrata Kini
• *Mangalam, m. Chidambara
• ** Chidambara Chandrasekaran
• *Sitalakshmi, m. R.B.S. Sivaramakrishnan
• **Sivaramakrishna Ramaseshan
• **Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar
• ** Sivaramakrishna Pancharatnam
• * Chandrasekhara Ramaswamy, m.
• ** 3 sons.

  First generation

• Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman FNA, FASc, FRS, was a distinguished physicist whose achievements in the field of light scattering earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics. He discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the wavelengths of some of the deflected light change. This phenomenon, now known as Raman scattering, results from the eponymous effect.
• Chandrasekhara Ramaswamy FASc was a noted meteorologist who served as Director-General of the Indian Meteorological Department. He conducted research into the regional and global effects of Indian monsoonal patterns.

  Second generation

• Venkatraman Radhakrishnan FASc was a distinguished astrophysicist credited with expanding the field of radio astronomy and for research in pulsars, interstellar clouds and various celestial bodies.
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar FNA, FASc, FRS was an Indian American astrophysicist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". His mathematical treatment of stellar evolution yielded many of the best current theoretical models of the later evolutionary stages of massive star and black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.
• Sivaraj Ramaseshan FNA, FASc was a distinguished crystallographer and successively Director of the Indian Institute of Science and President of the Indian Academy of Sciences
• Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar FNA, FASc, FRS was a distinguished physicist and pioneer in the field of liquid crystal technology who served as founder-president of the International Liquid Crystal Society. His efforts helped to establish the indigenous manufacture of liquid crystal displays in India. In 1977, he and his co-workers discovered the columnar phase of liquid crystals.
• Sivaramakrishna Pancharatnam FASc was a distinguished optical physicist who, in 1956, discovered the properties of what is now known as the geometric phase for polarized beams passing through crystals.
• Chidambara Chandrasekaran FASc was an accomplished demographer and biostatistician. In 1949, together with W. Edwards Deming, he devised the Chandra-Deming formula to estimate numbers of vital events by comparing results from two different systems. He was Director of the Demographic Training and Research Centre, Mumbai from 1959-1964, and conducted several landmark demographic studies for the Indian government, the World Bank and the United Nations. He was President of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population from 1969-1973.

  Third generation

• V. Shanta is a prominent oncologist and researcher. In 2005, she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service.
• Uma Parameswaran is a noted Indo-Canadian author of South Asian literature and a biographer of her great-uncle C. V. Raman.
• Vivek Radhakrishnan is a Bangalore-based designer.

  Footnotes