It would have been Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's 107th birthday today. Described as a 'child prodigy' and recognized as the first astrophysicist to win a Nobel Prize for his theory on the evolution of stars, Google has changed its logo in 28 countries to a doodle of him and the Chandrasekhar Limit.

Here are some facts about Chandrasekhar's life, published by Al Jazeera:

• Born in Lahore in 1910 to a Tamil family, Chandrasekhar was home tutored until age 12.
• In his autobiography, Chandrasekhar referred to his mother as "My mother Sita was a woman of high intellectual attainments".
• His uncle, Sir CV Raman, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.
• Also in 1930, Chandrasekhar completed his bachelor's degree in physics at the Presidency College in Madras, India (known today as Chennai).

• Chandrasekhar was then awarded a scholarship by the government of India to pursue graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He completed his PhD studies in 1933.

• In 1937, Chandrasekhar emigrated to the US and started working at the University of Chicago.

• Married to Lalitha Doraiswamy in the southern Indian city of Madras, Chandrasekhar praised his wife's "patient understanding, support, and encouragement" and called those the "central facts of my life".

• Working as a researcher at Cambridge University, Chandrasekhar made his most significant discovery, which became known as the Chandrasekhar Limit. But his colleagues were sceptical of his discovery and sought to discredit it.

• In 1983, at 73 years of age, Chandrasekhar shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with William Fowler for his "theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". That is, how shining stars eventually become "black holes" or "white dwarfs".

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