A Voyage Through Turbulence

Turbulence is widely recognized as one of the outstanding problems of the physical sciences, but it still remains only partially understood despite having attracted the sustained efforts of many leading scientists for well over a century. In A Voyage Through Turbulence we are transported through a crucial period of the history of the subject via biographies of twelve of its great personalities, starting with Osborne Reynolds and his pioneering work of the 1880s. This book will provide absorbing reading for every scientist, mathematician and engineer interested in the history and culture of turbulence, as background to the intense challenges that this universal phenomenon still presents.

List of contributors; Preface Peter Davidson, Yukio Kaneda, Keith Moffatt and Katepalli Sreenivasan; 1. Osborne Reynolds: a turbulent life Brian Launder and Derek Jackson; 2. Prandtl and the Göttingen school Eberhard Bodenschatz and Michael Eckert; 3. Theodore von Kármán A. Leonard and N. Peters; 4. G. I. Taylor: the inspiration behind the Cambridge school Katepalli Sreenivasan; 5. Lewis Fry Richardson Roberto Benzi; 6. The Russian school Gregory Falkovich; 7. Stanley Corrsin Charles Meneveau and James J. Riley; 8. George Batchelor: the post-war renaissance of research in turbulence H. K. Moffatt; 9. A. A. Townsend Ivan Marusic and Timothy B. Nickels; 10. Robert H. Kraichnan Gregory Eyink and Uriel Frisch; 11. Satish Dhawan Roddam Narasimha; 12. Philip G. Saffman Dale I. Pullin and Daniel I. Meiron; 13. Epilogue: a turbulence timeline Peter Davidson, Yukio Kaneda, Keith Moffatt and Katepalli Sreenivasan.

Biographies of twelve of the leading personalities in turbulence research chart the development of the subject from Osborne Reynolds onward. Written by leading researchers in a style that requires no specialist knowledge, this book is a must for every scientist, engineer and mathematician interested in the history of the subject.

Peter A. Davidson is Professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.
Yukio Kaneda is Professor in the Department of Computational Science and Engineering at the Graduate School of Engineering, University of Nagoya, Japan.
Keith Moffatt is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Katepalli R. Sreenivasan is University Professor in the Department of Physics and the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences, New York University.