2. The editorial team

The first issue of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics appeared in May 1956. On the inside cover of this first part, we read: ‘The JOURNAL OF FLUID MECHANICS exists for the publication of theoretical and experimental investigations of all aspects of the mechanics of fluids, and is issued in six parts per volume.’Footnote ¹ The Founder Editor was named as Dr G.K. Batchelor, whose address at that time (three years before the foundation of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics) was given as the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (he was actually a Lecturer in the Faculty of Mathematics and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge). There were three Associate Editors: Professor G.F. Carrier (Harvard), Professor W.C. Griffith (Princeton University) and Professor M.J. Lighthill (Manchester University) (see figure 1). The journal was initially published by Taylor & Francis Ltd, and the price was ‘£1 ($3) per part’; the exchange rate of pounds to dollars has decreased over the last 60 years!

Figure 1.

The original JFM editorial team.

Two ‘Assistant Editors’ were also named on this first part of the journal: Dr T.B. Benjamin and Dr I. Proudman, both colleagues of Batchelor in Cambridge. Brooke Benjamin was in the Engineering Department of the University; he would later serve for a period (1961–1965) as co-Editor with Batchelor. Ian Proudman was the son of Joseph Proudman (1888–1975), early pioneer of dynamical oceanography; Ian had been Batchelor's first research student, and had just completed with him a major work (Batchelor & Proudman Reference Batchelor and Proudman1956) on the large-scale structure of homogeneous turbulence; he was destined to leave Cambridge in 1963 to take up the Chair of Mathematics at the new University of Essex in Colchester. I will comment on the role of the Assistant Editors in § 6.

We may suppose that Batchelor must have conceived the idea of a new international journal of fluid mechanics in the spring or summer of 1955, perhaps earlier. It would have been prudent to consult widely with colleagues, both national and international, and to persuade the chosen publisher Taylor & Francis that this was a viable project. Batchelor was already established as a leading authority on turbulence, having published a series of important papers in this field (several in collaboration with Alan Townsend) since 1946, culminating in his 1953 CUP research monograph Homogeneous Turbulence. By 1955, at the age of 35, he had already developed a vision for the subject of fluid mechanics, both as to how it should be taught, and as to the manner in which research in fluid mechanics should best be promoted. He recalled much later (Batchelor Reference Batchelor1981) what motivated him to found the Journal; I quote here the relevant paragraph in full.

It is true that pre-existing journals containing papers on varying aspects and applications of fluid dynamics were scattered over a wide range, both geographically and by subject speciality. Journals referenced in that first part of JFM included the following.

National Academy Journals: Phil. Trans. A; Proc. Roy. Soc. A; Austr. J. Sci. Res. A; Can. J. Chem.; C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris; Proc. Acad. Sci. Amst.

Journals covering special fields that included fluid dynamics: J. Aero. Sci.; J. Roy. Aero. Soc.; J. Met.; Quart. J. Roy. Met. Soc.; J. Coll. Sci.; Z. Phys. Chem.; J. Appl. Phys.; Phys. Rev.; J. Chem. Phys.; Ann. der Phys.

Journals having broad coverage of mechanics and mathematics: Quart. J. Mech. Appl. Math.; Z. Angew. Mat. Mech.; Proc. Cam. Phil. Soc.; Commun. Pure Appl. Math.

Strong competition might therefore be expected for anyone daring to set up a new journal encroaching on the various specialist fields of application, and the indications are that Batchelor did indeed run into some opposition as his intentions were recognised. He was also apprehensive about competition from Physics of Fluids, established so soon after JFM and apparently in competition with it. He eventually recognised that the threat of competition was not serious, and that there was room for both journals. Batchelor wrote to Hans Liepmann on 27 September 1962 (the second paragraph of a three-paragraph letter):

Despite the competition from pre-existing journals in 1955, Batchelor pressed ahead with his plans, gaining first the support of James Lighthill (FRS 1953), aged 31 in 1955 and already renowned for his pioneering work on aircraft noise. Few letters relating to the Journal survive from that period, but among them is the following from Lighthill to Batchelor on 11 October 1955:

So Lighthill was evidently already ‘on board’ as an Associate Editor, and an approach to Wayland Griffith was imminent; no doubt he was due to give a fluid dynamics seminar in Cambridge on the Friday of that week (13 October). In the event, Wayland did indeed agree to become an Associate Editor, in which capacity he served for 31 years until 1987. The approach to George Carrier was presumably made at about the same time; he also accepted appointment, and served until 1986. The relative youth, enthusiasm and extended loyalty to the Journal of the initial editorial team gave it an exceptional stability, encouraging others also to accept editorial responsibility as it expanded in later years.

3. The first issue

From October 1955 on, events moved rapidly: papers were commissioned for the early parts of the journal and subjected to what must have been a fairly rudimentary peer review; and the Journal was in effect launched with publication of the first part in May of the following year. This first issue consisted of 128 pages and contained 8 papers, all ‘received’ in the period November 1955 to January 1956. These papers, by an impressive group of authors, covered a good spread of topics from gas dynamics and shock waves at one end, to turbulence in a meteorological context, geophysical fluid dynamics and boundary layer theory at the other, as well as Lighthill's own paper ‘Drift’, the most compact title that has ever appeared in the Journal, perhaps indeed in the whole corpus of scientific literature.Footnote ² Here are the contents, and I include the institutions of the authors as recorded at that time.

Van Dyke, M.D. [AMES Aeronautical Laboratory, Moffett Field, California] The slender elliptic cone as a model for non-linear supersonic flow theory.

Saffman, P.G. & Turner, J.S. [Trinity College, Cambridge] On the collision of drops in turbulent clouds.

Lighthill, M.J. [University of Manchester] Drift.

Woods, L.C. [University of Sydney, Australia] On the thrust due to an air jet flowing from a wing placed in a wind tunnel.

Blackman, V. [Princeton University] Vibrational relaxation in oxygen and nitrogen.

Crease, J. [National Institute of Oceanography, Surrey] Long waves on a rotating earth in the presence of a semi-infinite boundary.

Glauert, M.B. [University of Manchester] The laminar boundary layer on oscillating plates and cylinders.

Rott, N. [Cornell University] Diffraction of a weak shock with vortex generation.

Thus four from the UK, three from USA, doubtless reflecting the choice of Editors, and one from Australia. For what it's worth, the numbers of Google citations of these papers as at 6 October 2016 were respectively 29, 1127, 146, 3, 294, 42, 108, 140; quite a spread if we take this as a measure of ‘impact’!

A letter from Milton Van Dyke to Batchelor (1 October 1955) survives, giving the flavour of the initial correspondence with early contributors to the Journal:

4. The fertile Cambridge environment

Batchelor was not of course working in a vacuum. There was a strong tradition of research in fluid mechanics in Cambridge, with roots going back to Isaac Newton, and nourished since the 1840s by Stokes, Maxwell, Lamb, Rayleigh, and more recently G.I. Taylor, Batchelor's research mentor in the immediate post-war years. Taylor was an acknowledged genius, who worked on his own in a small room in the old Cavendish Laboratory, with little need for collaborative interactions. Nevertheless, his reputation was such that others would flock to Cambridge to be near this source of inspiration. Batchelor had, from the early 1950s, great ambition to build a research group in turbulence, and he succeeded in doing so, with research students, research fellows (post-docs) of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a flow of distinguished senior visitors from overseas. Figure 2 shows a rather ill-focused photograph of this group as it was in 1955, with G.I. Taylor third from the left in the front row, flanked by Batchelor and Townsend. On Batchelor's left (i.e. to the right in the photo) is Fritz Ursell, who later became Beyer Professor of Mathematics at the University of Manchester (succeeding Lighthill, who moved to become Director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough); and on his left is Milton Van Dyke who was then spending a sabbatical year in Cambridge. Behind Batchelor is Owen Phillips, in the centre of the back row is Philip Saffman, and in the right-hand corner of the back row is Stewart Turner, all three still then at various stages in their PhD research. Saffman's work with Taylor (Saffman & Taylor Reference Saffman and Taylor1956) marked him as a rising star; and Phillips and Turner were soon to make their marks with pioneering work in the emerging field of geophysical fluid dynamics. We may be sure that this group of extremely talented people provided Batchelor with all the support, both moral and practical, that he might have needed in the process of setting up the Journal.

Figure 2.

The fluid dynamics research group, Cambridge 1955.

5. Change of publisher

All was not well, however, with JFM in the first two years of its existence. Batchelor was evidently unhappy with its slow initial growth, and particularly the difficulty of attracting new subscribers, and he ran into problems with the publisher Taylor & Francis, that, based in London at that time, seemed relatively remote and impersonal. Batchelor's concerns are evident in a letter to Professor T.A. Cherry of the University of Melbourne (Batchelor's alma mater) in response to his enquiry concerning the progress of JFM. Batchelor wrote to Cherry on 24 April 1957:

Dissatisfied for one reason or another with Taylor & Francis, Batchelor used his growing influence and reputation to persuade Cambridge University Press (CUP) to take over from Taylor & Francis, who were no doubt happy to be rid of this troublesome and exacting upstart. CUP took on the Journal from Volume 3 in 1958, by which time a number of outstanding papers had appeared, and it was gaining a firmer foothold in the publishing marketplace. Among the authors of papers in the first two volumes, one may find, in addition to members of the Editorial team themselves, well-known names such as M.S. Longuet-Higgins, Donald Coles, John Laufer, W. Chester, G.B. Whitham, C.S. Yih, R. Betchov, W.V.R. Malkus, A.A. Townsend, H.P. Greenspan, R.W. Stewart, J.A. Shercliff, J.B. Keller, L.M. Milne-Thomson, B.R. Morton, J.R.A. Pearson, A.J. Favre, J. Proudman, L.S.G. Kovasznay, T.H. Ellison, D.W. Moore and R.S. Scorer; some of these attained great subsequent eminence. The Journal was clearly off to a very good start, and the progress did indeed accelerate when CUP took over the publishing risk and responsibility, a move that was to pay great dividends in subsequent decades. (JFM has been one of the largest and most successful journals published by CUP for several decades past.)

6. Editorial process

There was no ‘Board of Editors’ for JFM. It was a matter of policy that each Editor and Associate Editor should act independently, receiving papers directly, choosing referees, corresponding directly with authors, and taking the ultimate decision on each paper to publish or not to publish. An author could of course appeal against a negative decision, but this was a rare occurrence, the reasons for rejection being usually unanswerable. Accepted papers often went through a lengthy revision process in response to referees’ reports, two or three versions of the paper being submitted before ultimate approval. I recall one extended correspondence with an author from Argentina, which led to five re-submissions over a period of three years before the paper was finally accepted. This was of course in the days when all correspondence was by airmail (sometimes surface mail for bulky packages), with consequent extended delay; the fact that papers could as a result have a long gestation period led in most cases to beneficial streamlining of the final published product!

Despite Batchelor's firm rules of procedure, a degree of flexibility is apparent in some early correspondence. Here, for example, is Batchelor's reply (26 October 1960) to a well-argued plea from Hans Liepmann for accelerated publication of his paper:

Later in the same letter:

Here, ‘this meeting’ was the Colloque International sur la Mécanique de la Turbulence, Marseille, 1961, organised by Batchelor, Favre and Kovasznay, about which much has since been written (see, for example, Moffatt Reference Moffatt2012).

Once papers were accepted for JFM, they passed to the Assistant Editors for copy-editing. I was myself drawn into this process in 1961 even before I had completed my PhD thesis; Batchelor plunged me in at the deep end, asking me to copy-edit the famous paper of Kolmogorov (Reference Kolmogorov1962), a translation from Russian of the paper that he had presented at the above Marseille turbulence colloquium; my task was to ensure that the grammar of the paper conformed to standard English usage, that the editorial conventions of the Journal were respected, and that any obscurities of presentation were highlighted for clarification at the proof stage by the author – a daunting task! The work done by the Assistant Editors in these early years played an important part in establishing the uniformly high standards of the Journal.

But it was of course Batchelor who dictated these standards. He was himself meticulous with regard to every small detail. (For example, he would insist that the full-stop should precede the closing bracket in any ‘full sentence’ parenthesis such as this.) On the other hand, the closing bracket should precede the full-stop in parentheses forming part of a sentence (such as this). As part of the Journal style, Batchelor chose the Harvard referencing system, so that, for example, Kolmogorov (Reference Kolmogorov1962) is referred to in just this way, rather than by the distinctly uninformative alternative such as [6] – a wise decision, because a well-informed reader of the Journal will immediately recognise a reference such as, say, Taylor (1923), without the time-delaying inconvenience of having to turn to the reference list at the end of a paper to find out what an obscure coding such as [17] might refer to.

7. Book reviews

Book reviews were to play an important part in the Journal from the outset, and, as the following letter indicates, these were intended to be reviews of substance, giving the author of a review an opportunity to express his own philosophy; in effect, to write an extended essay on the subject of the book under review. Batchelor wrote to S.C. Corrsin, Johns Hopkins University, on 6 December 1956:

Corrsin's six-page review of this book, considerably longer than the minimum set by this stipulation, duly appeared in August of the following year (Corrsin Reference Corrsin1957); he discussed nearly all the survey papers in the book, and it is interesting to note that his criticisms of the paper on ‘Turbulent diffusion’ by Batchelor and Townsend are particularly acute!

Batchelor himself wrote several book reviews in the early volumes, exploiting the ‘wide scope’ that he allowed himself. These still make absorbing reading! His review (Batchelor Reference Batchelor1956) of Momentum Transfer in Fluids by Corcoran, Opfell and Sage is a classic example, expounding his view on how an author of a book on turbulent flow could most usefully proceed, and how these authors conspicuously failed to do so. Batchelor writes of their attempt to cover turbulence:

Such pointed criticism is rare in reviews of scientific books (although frequently encountered in the humanities), but Batchelor, rather than provide merely an anodyne commentary, was clearly trying to set an example of serious criticism, an example that subsequent reviewers would be encouraged to follow. With wry humour, he completes this review with the paragraph:

Even more scathing was Batchelor's denunciation (Batchelor Reference Batchelor1957) of Viscous Flow Theory, II – Turbulent Flow by Shih-I Pai, where he writes:

And after several pages of detailed criticism, we come to this remarkable closing paragraph:

Wow! Comment would be superfluous.