The George Batchelor Memorial Lecture
by
Professor H.K. Moffatt
Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Cambridge University

and

The David Crighton Memorial Lecture
by
Professor G.I. Barenblatt
Department of Mathematics
University of California, Berkeley

on Monday, May 15, 2000
in the Main Seminar Room, Kohn Hall

Program

George Keith Batchelor (1920-2000) was a towering figure in fluid mechanics and contributed profoundly to many of its subareas, among them the theory of homogeneous turbulence and microhydrodynamics. As the founding editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, a position he held for more than forty years, George exerted a profound influence on fluid dynamics and set exacting standards. He founded and led for some thirty years the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, and made it possible for generations of first-rate fluid dynamicists to come together. George was instrumental in developing EUROMECH as a major force for mechanics in Europe. A long list of monographs of great quality and longevity emerged during his editorship for forty-five years of Cambridge Monographs on Mechanics and Applied Mathematics.

David George Crighton (1942-2000) was an accomplished fluid dynamicist with particular expertise in aeroacoustics and the interaction of vortex flows with solid surfaces. He was admired for his applied mathematics skills and for his leadership of the fluid dynamics community in the world at large, within Cambridge in particular. In 1986, he became a professor of applied mathematics at Cambridge and took over the headship of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1991. He succeeded George Batchelor as the editor of Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and was the Master of Jesus College since 1997. David’s cheerfulness, commitment and continued hardwork, even while suffering from cancer for a year or so before his untimely death, were phenomenal and universally admired.