  The electromagnetic interaction alters the Chandrasekhar mass limit by a
factor which depends, as computed in the literature, on the atomic number of
the positively charged nuclei present within the degenerate matter.
Unfortunately, the methods employed for such computations break Lorentz
invariance ab initio. By employing the methods of finite temperature
relativistic quantum field theory, we show that in the leading order, the
effect of electromagnetic interaction reduces the Chandrasekhar mass limit for
non-general-relativistic, spherically symmetric white dwarfs by a universal
factor of $(1-3\alpha/4\pi)$, $\alpha$ being the fine-structure constant.
