Foundations of Fluid Dynamics

Giovanni Gallavotti9783540414155, 3540414150

The imagination is stricken by the substantial conceptual identity between the problems met in the theoretical study of physical phenomena. It is absolutely unexpected and surprising, whether one studies equilibrium statistical mechanics, or quantum field theory, or solid state physics, or celestial mechanics, harmonic analysis, elasticity, general relativity or fluid mechanics and chaos in turbulence.So that when in 19881 was made chair of Fluid Mechanics at the Universita La Sapienza, not to recognize work I did on the subject (there was none) but, rather, to avoid my teaching mechanics, from which I could have a strong cultural influence on mathematical physics in Roma, I was not excessively worried, although I was clearly in the wrong place. The subject is wide, hence in the last decade I could do nothing else but go through books and libraries looking for something that was within the range of the methods and experiences of my past work.