Chandrasekhar was the third of ten children born to Sita Ayyar (née Balakrishnan)
and Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya Ayyar, a senior officer in the Indian Audits
and Accounts Department, who was posted in Lahore as the Deputy Auditor
General of the Northwestern Railways. Chandrasekhar's mother was devoted to
intellectual pursuits and had translated Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House into Tamil.
His father was an accomplished Carnatic music violinist who had authored
several books on musicology. Chandrasekhar was the nephew of Nobel-prize
winning physicist C. V. Raman.

Chandrasekhar attended the Hindu High School, Triplicane, Madras, during the
years 1922-25. Subsequently, he studied at Presidency College from 1925 to
1930, obtaining his bachelor's degree, B.Sc. (Hon.), in physics in June 1930. In
July 1930, Chandrasekhar was awarded a Government of India scholarship to
pursue graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, where he became a
research student of Professor R. H. Fowler, and was admitted to Trinity College.
On the advice of Prof. P. A. M. Dirac, Chandrasekhar spent a year at the Institut for
Teoretisk Fysik in Copenhagen, where he met Prof. Niels Bohr.

In the summer of 1933, Chandrasekhar was awarded his Ph.D. degree at
Cambridge, and the following October, he was elected to a Prize Fellowship at
Trinity College for the period 1933-37. During this time, he formed friendships
with Sir Arthur Eddington and Professor E. A. Milne.

In September 1936, Chandrasekhar married Lalitha Doraiswamy, who he had
met as a fellow student at Presidency College, Madras, and who was a year
junior to him. In his Nobel autobiography, Chandrasekhar wrote, "Lalitha's patient
understanding, support, and encouragement have been the central facts of my
life."