If there is something that the history of science has taught us is that even the brightest scientists are, at the end of the day, humans. And, as we will see, they are subject to all those little and great weaknesses that characterize our species: pride, prejudices … And why not say it, stubbornness.
The history of rivalry between Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) and Arthur Eddington (1882-1994) is perhaps one of the most illustrative examples of how these human weaknesses can delay scientific progress for decades.
Let’s put ourselves on stage. We are in 1930 when a Hindu of just nineteen years, during his boat trip from Madrás to England, develops a revolutionary theory about the final destination of the stars. This young man, called Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, had discovered something extraordinary: there was a mathematical limit for the mass of white dwarf stars, above which they could not maintain their stability.
In the other corner of the scientific ring was Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, the most respected British astronom The rockstar of British astrophysics at that time.
The fateful encounter
On January 11, 1935 at a meeting of the Astronomical Society Royal, Chandrasekhar presented calculations that showed that the stars with masses greater than 1.4 times the mass of the sun (what we know today as the chandrasekhar’s limit) could not end their lives as stable white dwarfs. And what happened to them then? Well, that was the million dollar question that had no answer.
Eddington, who was sitting at the audience, asked the floor after the presentation. What followed was the academic equivalent of a murder in public.
With all the authority that conferred his years of experience and his position, Eddington proceeded to ridicule the theory of the young Hindu, qualifying it as “absurd” and arguing that “there should be some law of nature that prevented the stars from behaving in a way so absurd ».
Cosmic irony
The truly ironic thing about this situation is that Eddington, the same man who had helped confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity (a theory that, by the way, at the time seemed “absurd” for many), now refused to accept The mathematical consequences of combining that same relativity with quantum mechanics, which was exactly what Chandrasekhar had done.
And here comes the tasty part: Eddington was completely wrong. Chandrasekhar’s calculations were correct and, more importantly, the foundations for our modern understanding of black holes laid, although at that time no one dared to suggest such a possibility.
Eddington’s authority was such that his rejection of the new theory had devastating consequences. For decades the research on stellar collapse was delayed.
The Hindu scientist, demoralized, but not defeated, abandoned this line of research and dedicated himself to other fields of astrophysics, where he made equally bright contributions.
It was not until the sixties when the observational evidence became impossible to ignore, that the scientific community finally accepted that Chandrasekhar had been correct all the time. In 1983, almost five decades after that fateful meeting, Chandrasekhar received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on star evolution.
The price of prejudice
Why Eddington, a brilliant scientist and generally open to revolutionary ideas, was so closed in this case? Science historians have speculated a lot about their motives. Some suggest that it was simple racial or generational prejudice. Others argue that Eddington had a philosophical aversion to the idea that the stars could collapse completely, something that seemed “little elegant” from the point of view of nature.
Today, Chandrasekhar’s limit is a fundamental concept in astrophysics, and its name is recorded with gold letters not only in textbooks, but also in space: NASA appointed one of its most important space telescopes in its honor. Meanwhile Eddington’s reputation, although it is still respected for its many important contributions, has the stain of this episode as a reminder that even the greatest can be wrong when they allow the ego to cloud its judgment.
So you know, the next time I look at the stars, remember this story. Remember that somewhere above there are stars that are reaching that critical limit of 1.4 solar masses, preparing to demonstrate, once again, that Chandrasekhar was right.
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