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Stokes's Fundamental Contributions to Fluid Dynamics
Author(s)
Date Issued
2019-06-27
Date Available
2019-12-10T14:19:47Z
Abstract
George Gabriel Stokes was one of the giants of hydrodynamics in the nineteenth century. He made fundamental mathematical contributions to fluid dynamics that had profound practical consequences. The basic equations formulated by him, the Navier-Stokes equations, are capable of describing fluid flows over a vast range of magnitudes. They play a central role in numerical weather prediction, in the simulation of blood flow in the body and in countless other important applications. In this chapter we put the primary focus on the two most important areas of Stokes’s work on fluid dynamics, the derivation of the Navier-Stokes equations and the theory of finite amplitude oscillatory water waves. Stokes became an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1837. He was coached by the ‘Senior Wrangler-maker’, William Hopkins and, in 1841, Stokes was Senior Wrangler and first Smith’s Prizeman. It was following a suggestion of Hopkins that Stokes took up the study of hydrodynamics, which was at that time a neglected area of study in Cambridge. Stokes was to make profound contributions to hydrodynamics, his most important being the rigorous establishment of the mathematical equations for fluid motions, and the theoretical explanation of a wide range of phenomena relating to wave motions in water.
Type of Material
Book Chapter
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright (Published Version)
2019 Oxford University Press
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Part of
McCartney M., Whitaker A., Wood A. (eds.). George Gabriel Stokes Life, Science and Faith
ISBN
0198822863
9780198822868
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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