Waves In Fluids

This is a reissue in the Cambridge Mathematical Library series of a book first published in 1978. When it was first issued, it had enormous impact on all those working in fluid flows, and on waves in particular. I quote from the review by D C Pack, published in 1979 in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (vol 90, pp 605-8): ``The book will become a standard work for reading and consultation by all interested in fluid flow. It will be invaluable to research students ... Even among the most experienced readers few, if any, will fail to find in it new insights ... comments and comparisons that illuminate the chapters.'' The same comments can be made today, because in spite of the two and a half decades that have now passed, it retains its immediacy and vitality. The book is designed to develop the fundamental concepts of waves in fluids through an in-depth analysis, in each of four chapters, of four important and representative examples of waves in fluids, namely, sound waves, one-dimensional waves, water waves and internal waves. A major highlight of the book is the thorough treatment of group velocity and ray-tracing ideas, developed throughout the text and with a climax in chapter four. As a potential textbook, or simply as an invaluable research aid, it remains indispensable. However, it does not cover such major developments in the last two decades as solitons, and the role of canonical equations such as the Korteweg-de Vries equation and the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Hence it will need to be used in conjunction with more recent texts which cover these topics. R Grimshaw