I doubt that the young Subramania and Shandr Shaker knew what he was getting himself into.

He was born in 1910 in the British Raj, and pretty much immediately everybody recognized

that he was an absolute genius.

He won prizes and competitions and scholarships.

And in 1930, he won a scholarship to attend Trinity College over in Cambridge.

And on his week's long voyage there, he worked out how white dwarfs worked.

And now this is where things get a little spicy.

One of his mentors and advisors and general persons I look up to was none other than Sir

Arthur Eddington. Up until this point, white dwarfs were known observationally. We started to see

these small, hot, bright white stars, and nobody knew how they

worked. And this mystery of what the heck are these white dwarfs that are so small, so dense,

so hot, like what's going on? Eddington gives us one of my favorite quotes in all of science

history. And I know I've said this quote

before, but it's been a while and it's worth giving again. Eddington said about white dwarfs,

especially one of the first identified white dwarfs, which was an orbital companion of the star

series. He said, we learn about the stars by receiving and interpreting the messages which their

light brings to us. The message of the companion of Sirius, when it was decoded, ran,

I am composed a material 3,000 times denser than anything you have ever come across. A ton of my

material would be a little nugget that you could put in a matchbox.

What reply can one make to such a message? The reply which most of us made in 1914 was,

shut up. Don't talk nonsense. So in comes Big Shandy. And I like calling him Big Shandy because

he's a big deal and we're we're cool like

...