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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an astrophysicist whose genius determined the fate of dying stars. At just 19 years old, while on a boat from India to England, he calculated that there is a maximum mass for a stable white dwarf star. This limit, now known as the 'Chandrasekhar Limit' (approx. 1.4 solar masses), determines whether a star will become a white dwarf or collapse into a neutron star or black hole. His theories were initially ridiculed by his mentor Arthur Eddington, but were eventually proven correct, leading to a Nobel Prize in 1983. He was also a master of mathematical elegance, writing definitive works on black holes and stellar dynamics.