George Batchelor

George Keith Batchelor (1920 to 2000) was an Australian applied mathematician who worked in fluid dynamics, born in Melbourne and later based at the University of Cambridge. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Melbourne, worked on fluid flow in aircraft engines at the Australian Aeronautical Research Laboratory, and in 1945 travelled to Cambridge to work with Geoffrey Taylor on turbulence. He received his doctorate in 1948, became head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1959 and a professor of applied mathematics in 1964. In May 1956 he founded the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and edited it until January 1999. His textbook An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics (1967) is still regularly reprinted. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957 and won the Adams Prize of the University of Cambridge in 1951.