Abstract
The current stellar evolution models establish that stars which have up to approximately eight times the solar mass yield white dwarfs at the end of their lifes. Works appeared at the 1920s described such objects as formed essentially by a gas of electrons and nucleons, where the force of its degeneracy pressure equalized the gravitational contraction, giving rise to stable bodies with high densities. At the 1930s Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar launched his approach to the white dwarf problem in papers where he deduced the densities and the maximum mass allowed for those stars. Such a maximum value is known nowadays as the Chandrasekhar limit and the aim here is to analyze the original papers by its discoverer, presenting in a didactic form the steps which led to the deduction of that important result.
Keywords:
Astrophysics; White Dwarfs; Chandrasekhar Limit