Chandrasekhar was born on 21 November 1920 in Machilipatnam in modern-day Andhra Pradesh. Chandrasekhar completed his high school from Bapatla village in Guntur from Andhra Pradesh. He completed his M.A. in mathematics from the Presidency College, Chennai and a PhD from the Department of Mathematics, University of Madras in 1942, under the supervision of K. Ananda Rau. He was a professor at ETH Zurich and a founding faculty member of School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). He is known for his work in number theory and summability. He received the Padma Shri, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, and the Ramanujan Medal, and he was an honorary fellow of TIFR. He was president of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) from 1971 to 1974.
When Chandrasekhar was with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, US, Homi Bhabha invited Chandrashekhar to join the School of Mathematics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Chandrashekhar persuaded mathematicians, such as L. Schwarz and C. L. Siegel, from all over the world to visit TIFR and deliver courses of lectures. In 1965, Chandrasekhar left the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to join the ETH Zurich, where he retired in 1988.
In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society
He died in 13th April 2017.
