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Profile
I retired in 2002 from the Professorship of Mathematical Physics (1978) which I held in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), and have been an Emeritus Professor since then.
My research area is Fluid Dynamics, and I continue to keep in touch with developments in this broad field.
I still publish occasional papers in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (JFM) and I regularly act as a referee of papers submitted to this and other scientific journals.
Teaching
My teaching covered mainly fluid dynamics and the magnetohydrodynamics of stars and planets, as well as basic courses in electromagnetic theory, wave theory, etc. Since 2002, my ‘teaching’ has been limited to occasional research and outreach seminars, both in Cambridge, and at many National and International Universities elsewhere.
Research
My research has been largely focussed on turbulence in its application to the spontaneous generation of magnetic fields in conducting fluids (i.e.’dynamo theory’); my 1978 monograph “Magnetic Field Generation in Electrically Conducting Fluids” has been widely cited in both the geomagnetic and astro-magnetic literature. I have been particularly with ‘chiral turbulence’, in which helicity plays a crucial role. I have also been frequently involved at the other extreme of fluid dynamics, the limit of flow at microscopic scales where viscous effects are dominant. Such flows can be realised experimentally using very viscous fluids, e.g. silicon oil or syrup) and I have greatly enjoyed occasional experimental investigations in the G.K.Batchelor Fluid Dynamics laboratory in the basement of DAMTP.
Selected Publications
2025 Flow; The Twists and Turns of a Life in Turbulence. UKBookPublishing.com. The book is available from Amazon or from Waterstones
2024 The early years of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. J.Fluid Mech 1000,E2–1 – E2–11.
(With E. Dormy): 2024 Prandtl-Batchelor flow in a cylindrical domain. SIAM J. Appl. Math. 84 (4), 1658–1667.
(With Y. Kimura): 2024 Spiral wind-up of vortex sheets. Geophysical and Astrophysiccal Fluid Dynamics pp. 1–14.
2021 Some topological aspects of fluid dynamics. J. Fluid Mech. 914, P1–1 –- P1–56.
2019 Singularities in fluid mechanics. Phys. Rev. Fluids 4 (11), 110502.
(With E. Dormy) 2019 Self-Exciting Fluid Dynamos. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge Texts in Applied Mathematics, 520+xviii pp
(With R.E.Goldstein, & A. I.Pesci): 2016 Soap-film dynamics and topological transitions under continuous deformation. Phys. Rev. Fluids 1 (6), 060503.
1969 The degree of knottedness of tangled vortex lines. J. Fluid Mech. 35 (1), 117–129.
1964 Viscous and resistive eddies near a sharp corner. J. Fluid Mech. 18 (1), 1–18.