Abstract
In 1961, Ed Salpeter (1925–2008) opened a new chapter in the investigation of white dwarfs. His goal was to improve the equation of state Chandrasekhar had developed and used in his pioneering white dwarf calculations in the 1930s. For simplicity, Chandrasekhar had assumed that white dwarfs are fully degenerate (that is, at the absolute zero of temperature), and he had neglected electrostatic interactions among the ions and electrons.
Any Fool Can Make a White Dwarf!
—Icko Iben, Jr.
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Reference
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Van Horn, H.M. (2015). Diamonds in the Sky. In: Unlocking the Secrets of White Dwarf Stars. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09369-7_11
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