Walter Tollmien (13 October 1900, in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

– 25 November 1968, in

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

fluid dynamicist Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasmas) and the forces on them. It has applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical and biomedi ...

Life

Walter Tollmien studied from the winter semester 1920–1921 mathematics and physics with

Ludwig Prandtl Ludwig Prandtl (4 February 1875 – 15 August 1953) was a German fluid dynamicist, physicist and aerospace scientist. He was a pioneer in the development of rigorous systematic mathematical analyses which he used for underlying the science of ...

in Göttingen and then from 1924 onwards worked under Prandtl at

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (German: ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften'') was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by ...

. After a research stays in United States in 1930 and 1933 he became a Professor in 1937 at

Technische Hochschule Dresden TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

. In 1957 he took over the post of Director at

Max-Planck Institute The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

for fluid mechanics research.

Achievements

Through his pioneering work as a researcher and a teacher Walter Tollmien brought fluid mechanics into the lime light and as an inter disciplinary science of extreme importance. The transition from laminar to turbulence results in

Tollmien–Schlichting wave In fluid dynamics, a Tollmien–Schlichting wave (often abbreviated T-S wave) is a streamwise unstable wave which arises in a bounded shear flow (such as boundary layer and channel flow). It is one of the more common methods by which a laminar bound ...

s named after him.

Work

* Tollmien, Walter (1929): Über die Entstehung der Turbulenz. 1. Mitteilung, Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Göttingen, Math. Phys. Klasse 1929: 21ff * Tollmien, Walter (1931): Grenzschichttheorie, in: ''Handbuch der Experimentalphysik'' IV,1, Leipzig, S. 239–287.

External links

* Fluid dynamicists 1900 births 1968 deaths Max Planck Institute directors TU Dresden faculty {{germany-engineer-stub