G.K. BATCHELOR AND THE HOMOGENIZATION OF TURBULENCE

This essay is based on the G.K. Batchelor Memorial Lecture that I delivered in May 2000 at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP), Santa Barbara, where two parallel programs on Turbulence and Astrophysical Turbulence were in progress. It focuses on George Batchelor's major contributions to the theory of turbulence, particularly during the postwar years when the emphasis was on the statistical theory of homogeneous turbulence. In all, his contributions span the period 1946–1992 and are for the most part concerned with the Kolmogorov theory of the small scales of motion, the decay of homogeneous turbulence, turbulent diffusion of a passive scalar field, magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, rapid distortion theory, two-dimensional turbulence, and buoyancy-driven turbulence.