For many members of the Chandrasekhar family there are multiple possible spellings in use for names. This includes R. Chandrasekhara Iyer; he was named Chandrasekharan (with an "n") but later became known as Chandrasekhara Aiyar (without the "n").[1] Furthermore, the family name "Aiyar" is sometimes spelled "Iyer" or "Ayyar".
Family tree
R. Chandrasekhara Iyer (1866–1910), m. Parvati Ammal (1869–1916)[2][3]
Chandrasekhara Subrahmanyan Iyer (1885–1960), m. Sitalakshmi Iyer (1891–1931)[2][3]
Uma (born 1938), m. Parameswaran. Noted Indo-Canadian writer of South Asian-Canadian literature; former English professor at the University of Winnipeg.[4][5]
Chandrasekhara Venkata (C. V.) 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.[15]
Chandrasekhara Ramaswamy
FASc (brother of C. V. Raman) was a noted
meteorologist who served as Director-General of the
Indian Meteorological Department (1965–1967). He conducted research into the regional and global effects of Indian monsoonal patterns.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
FNA,
FASc,
FRS (nephew of C. V. Raman) was an
Indian Americanastrophysicist 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.[16] The
Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.
Sivaraj Ramaseshan
FNA,
FASc (nephew of C. V. Raman) was a distinguished
crystallographer and successively Director of the Indian Institute of Science (1981-1984) and President of the Indian Academy of Sciences (1983-1985)
Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar
FNA,
FASc,
FRS (nephew of C. V. Raman) 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 (nephew of C. V. Raman) was a distinguished optical physicist who, in 1956, discovered the properties of what is now known as the
geometric phase (sometimes known as the Pancharatnam phase) for polarized beams passing through crystals.
Chidambara Chandrasekaran
FASc (nephew of C. V. Raman) 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 (later renamed as the International Institute of Population Sciences) from 1959 to 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 (IUSSP) from 1969 to 1973.
Vidya Shankar (niece of C. V. Raman) was a distinguished musicologist and vainika (veena musician) who received the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2007.[17]
Third generation
V. Shanta (great-niece of C. V. Raman, niece of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar) was a prominent oncologist and researcher. In 2005, she received the
Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service.
Uma Parameswaran (great-niece of C. V. Raman, niece of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar) is a noted Indo-Canadian author of South Asian literature and a biographer of her great-uncle C. V. Raman.
Sources
Parameswaran, Uma (2011). C. V. Raman: a biography. Penguin Books.
ISBN9780143066897
Wali, Kameshwar C. (1991). Chandra: a biography of S. Chandrasekhar. The University of Chicago Press.
ISBN0-226-87054-5.
Footnotes
^Parameswaran, p. 5. "At the time of Raman's birth, Chandrasekharan, or Chandrasekhara Aiyar as he became to be known, [...]"