--- title: S. Chandrasekhar: Google Doodle Celebrates Astrophysicist description: Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his theory on how stars evolve. canonical: https://time.com/4988829/s-chandrasekhar-google-doodle-subrahmanyan/ copyright: © 2026 TIME USA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. terms: https://legal.time.com/terms-of-service/ license_contact: syndication@time.com author: Kevin Lui article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-10-19T02:59:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:47:27.910Z og:title: S. Chandrasekhar's Life Celebrated With Google Doodle og:description: The astrophysicist's theory of star evolution won him a Nobel Prize in 1983. og:url: https://time.com/4988829/s-chandrasekhar-google-doodle-subrahmanyan/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta8d6a2e68d34ffb9/6988e29622fb85ebc5e2354d/s-chandrasekhars-107th-birthday-5671696282419200-2xa.gif?branch=production&width=711&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 711 og:image:height: 400 og:image:alt: s-chandrasekhars-107th-birthday-5671696282419200-2xa og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: S. Chandrasekhar's Life Celebrated With Google Doodle twitter:description: The astrophysicist's theory of star evolution won him a Nobel Prize in 1983. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta8d6a2e68d34ffb9/6988e29622fb85ebc5e2354d/s-chandrasekhars-107th-birthday-5671696282419200-2xa.gif?branch=production&width=711&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Astrophysicist S. Chandrasekhar's Life is Being Celebrated With a New Google Doodle > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME The Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition The Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors. The Brief brings TIME's perspective to the day's most important stories, helping readers understand not just what is happening, but why it matters. 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The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=c4dd931b-420e-40a3-a7c8-8300023c5ad5&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Kevin Lui](https://time.com/author/kevin-lui/) ## Kevin Lui Oct 19, 2017 2:59 AM UTC  Google by [Kevin Lui](https://time.com/author/kevin-lui/) ## Kevin Lui Oct 19, 2017 2:59 AM UTC Ever wondered how the stars you see in the sky might eventually die? Ever thought about how black holes are formed? The subject of Thursday’s Google Doodle is [celebrated](https://www.google.com/doodles/s-chandrasekhars-107th-birthday) specifically for his answers to these questions, and for his contribution to our understanding of how celestial bodies evolve. In 1983, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar became the first astrophysicist to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Described by Google as a “child prodigy,” the Indian-American had already published his first paper and come up with his theory of star evolution before even turning 20, and was elected to the Royal Society of London at age 34. Google’s animated Doodle, published on what would have been Chandrasekhar’s 107th birthday, is a simple illustration of one of his most important contributions to how we understand the universe — the eponymous Chandrasekhar Limit. As the animation suggests, the key number is 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. Any star lighter than that will eventually collapse and become a denser body known as white dwarf. When a white dwarf’s mass exceeds 1.4 times that of the Sun, it will continue to collapse and condense, eventually becoming either a supernova explosion or a black hole. Chandrasekhar’s theories and calculations were met with skepticism when they were first conceived in the 1930s, according to Google — 50 years before the same discoveries were to earn him a Nobel Prize. A string of other honors were also bestowed on him, including the Royal Astronomical Society’s gold medal. ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. And, you know, we keep making more and more of these things. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4988829/s-chandrasekhar-google-doodle-subrahmanyan/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4988829/s-chandrasekhar-google-doodle-subrahmanyan/"},"headline":"Astrophysicist S. 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