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Part of the reissued Oxford Classic Texts in the Physical Sciences series, this book was first published in 1983, and has swiftly become one of the great modern classics of relativity theory. It represents a personal testament to the work of the author, who spent several years writing and working-out the entire subject matter.
The theory of black holes is the most simple and beautiful consequence of Einstein's relativity theory. At the time of writing there was no physical evidence for the existence of these objects, therefore all that Professor Chandrasekhar used for their construction were modern mathematical concepts of space and time. Since that time a growing body of evidence has pointed to the truth of Professor Chandrasekhar's findings, and the wisdom contained in this book has become fully evident.
List of contents
- 1: Mathematical preliminaries
- 2: A space-time of sufficient generality
- 3: The Schwarzchild space-time
- 4: The perturbations of the Schwarzchild black hole
- 5: The Reissner-Nordstrom solution
- 6: The Kerr metric
- 7: The geodesics in the Kerr space-time
- 8: Electromagnetic waves in Kerr geometry
- 9: The gravitational perturbations of the Kerr black hole
- 10: Spin-1/2 particles in Kerr geometry
- 11: Other solutions
- 12: Other methods
Summary
First published in 1983, this book is one of the great modern classics of relativity theory. It details one of the most beautiful areas of mathematical physics; the theory of black holes. `There is no doubt in my mind that this book is a masterpiece ... beautifully written and well-presented.' Roger Penrose in Nature.
Additional text
"Chandrasekhar has provided us with a magisterial text on the classical black holes, outstanding in the depth and detail of its coverage...Throughout, a wealth of mathematical ideas is explained and employed in the process of extracting the properties of these space-times, and the similarities and differences between the different black hole space-times are thoroughly treated. This book is an undoubted classic, and wil remain a standard reference work on black holes for many years." Mathematics Today, October 1999
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There is no doubt in my mind that this book is a masterpiece...beautifully written and well-presented. Roger Penrose in Nature
