Edmund Stoner and white dwarf stars

摘要

The discovery of a limiting mass for white dwarf stars is today usually attributed to Subramanian Chandrasekhar. However, it would seem that an article by Edmund Stoner, which appeared in the Philosophical Magazine in 1930, was the first publication to give a convincing demonstration of the existence of a limiting mass for white dwarfs. We examine here why it is that the contributions of Stoner and others towards this discovery have been largely forgotten.