Volkoff returned to Vancouver in 1930 and attended the
University of British Columbia, receiving a bachelor's degree in physics in 1934 and a master's degree in 1936. He then studied with
J. Robert Oppenheimer at the
University of California, Berkeley. At this time, Oppenheimer became interested in relativistic
astrophysics, in particular, the stability of
compact objects. As was typical, Oppenheimer worked with a student in his investigations. For the topic of neutron stars, he picked Volkoff. Together, they published the paper "On Massive Neutron Cores" in 1939. This was Volkoff's first and most famous scientific contribution. They showed that the maximum mass of a neutron star must be between one half and several
solar masses. By the 1990s, astronomers have catalogued hundreds of these objects, and their maximum mass was thought to be between 1.5 and 3 solar masses, in the same order of magnitude as the original calculation by Tolman, Oppenheimer, and Volkoff. Volkoff earned his
Ph.D. in 1940 and subsequently undertook further research on nuclear physics with
Eugene Wigner at
Princeton University. He facilitated the development of
high-energy physics in Canada and was an early proponent of the Tri-University Meson Facility (
TRIUMF). ==Honours==