"What a splendid book! Reading it is a joy, and for me, at least, continuing reading it became compulsive. . . . Chandrasekhar is a distinguished astrophysicist and every one of the lectures bears the hallmark of all his work: precision, thoroughness, lucidity."—Sir Hermann Bondi, NatureThe late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upperlimit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the NobelPrize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, includingThe Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and, most recently,*Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.*About the AuthorS. Chandrasekhar has received many awards in his career, including the Nobel Prize for Physics, the National Medal of Science (U.S.), and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (London). He is the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Department of Physics, and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago.