- At the Royal Astronomical Society in 1935, Arthur Eddington publicly and methodically dismantled Chandrasekhar's argument for a maximum mass of white dwarfs, calling it absurd and 'stellar buffoonery.'
- Eddington's persistent attacks on Chandra's work were likely driven by personal dislike or discomfort with the implications of stellar collapse, though the exact reasons remain unknown.
- Prominent physicists like Bohr, Pauli, and Dirac privately agreed with Chandra but lacked the standing to publicly challenge the powerful Eddington in the field of astronomy.
- Chandra was denied the chance to reply to Eddington's criticism at a Paris talk, and a 1939 Cambridge dinner ended with Eddington angrily rejecting the very arguments he had just endorsed.