Prandtl's famous lecture with the title "Über Flüssigkeitsbewegung bei
sehr kleiner Reibung" was presented on August 12, 1904 at the Third
Internationalen Mathematischen Kongress in Heidelberg, Germany. This
lecture invented the phrase "Boundary Layer" (Grenzschicht). The paper
was written during Prandtl's first academic position at the University
of Hanover. The reception of the academic world to this remarkable paper
was at first lukewarm. But Felix Klein, the famous mathematician in
Göttingen, immediately realized the importance of Prandtl's idea and
offered him an academic position in Göttingen. There Prandtl became the
founder of modern aerodynamics. He was a professor of applied mechanics
at the Göttingen University from 1904 until his death on August 15,
1953. In 1925 he became Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Fluid Mechanics. He developed many further ideas in aerodynamics, such
as flow separation, base drag and airfoil theory, especially the law of
the wall for turbulent boundary layers and the instability of boundary
layers en route to turbulence. During the fifty years that Prandtl was
in the Göttingen Research Center, he made important contributions to gas
dynamics, especially supersonic flow theory. All experimental techniques
and measurement techniques of fluid mechanics attracted his strong
interest. Very early he contributed much to the development of wind
tunnels and other aerodynamic facilities. He invented the soap-film
analogy for the torsion of noncircular material sections; even in the
fields of meteorology, aeroelasticity, tribology and plasticity his
basic ideas are still in use.
