The Chandrasekhar family is a distinguished Indian intellectual family, several of whose members achieved eminence, notably in the field of physics. Two members of the family, Sir C. V. Raman and his nephew, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, were Nobel laureates in physics.

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

First generation

• 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.

Second generation

• Venkatraman Radhakrishnan FASc (son of C. V. Raman) 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 (nephew of C. V. Raman) 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.^[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. ISBN 9780143066897
• Wali, Kameshwar C. (1991). Chandra: a biography of S. Chandrasekhar. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-87054-5.