Early days of turbulence research in Cambridge

Abstract

‘Early days’ and ‘turbulence’ are vague terms which cover much ground and the following recollections concern the period 1945–1956, referring mostly to experimental work done in G. I. Taylor's old room at the Cavendish Laboratory. My arrival there can be blamed entirely on George Batchelor. We had both been working in the C.S.I.R. Aeronautical Laboratory in Melbourne, George in the Aerodynamics Section and I in the Instruments Section. My work was devising and building gadgets for use in other sections, for wind-tunnel tests, engine tests and so on. One was a very primitive amplifier for hot-wire signals but I did not use it. At the same time, George had been studying the Taylor papers on the statistical theory of isotropic turbulence, and extending it to axisymmetric turbulence. He had in mind coming to Cambridge at the end of the war as a research student of G. 1. Taylor and asked me to consider doing the same. I had interrupted my research in nuclear physics in 1939, intending to return and finish my scholarship, but I found myself signed on to do experimental work on turbulent flows. Why I was accepted is still a mystery, as my ignorance of fluid dynamics, let alone t,urbulence, was almost total.