1
Foundation of Fluid Mechanics
1.1 Combination of Early Development of Fluid
Dynamics with Calculus
In 250 B.C., Archimedes (ancient Greeks, 287–212 B.C., as shown in
Fig. 1.1), commissioned by King Syracuse of Sicily to examine the crown,
studied the principle of force balance and proposed the famous hydrodynamic buoyancy theorem, which is also a part of hydrostatics. During this
period, the achievements of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and other ancient
Greek scientists mainly stayed at the philosophical level. At the mathematical level, Pythagoras put forward the concept that everything is a number
and discovered the Pythagorean law. After A.D. until the Renaissance, society
was dark and scientific development was slow. During the Renaissance (fourteenth to early seventeenth centuries A.D.), with the emergence of the new
capitalism, the demand for handicraft and mechanical industries greatly
promoted the development of mathematics and mechanics. During this
period, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642, as shown in Fig. 1.2)
discovered the law of inertia of motion of objects and developed thermometers and telescopes. The Italian versatile scientist Leonardo Di Ser Piero Da
Vinci (1452–1519 A.D., as shown in Fig. 1.3) published a series of qualitative
cognitive results of flow, vortices, fluid mechanics, including the qualitative
principle of bird flight, and even used vortices as an element of beauty in
many of Leonardo’s paintings (as shown in Fig. 1.4). In 1653, the French
scientist B. Pascal (1623–1662) put forward the principle of hydrostatic pressure transfer (Pascal theorem) and made a hydraulic press. Later, he continued
to carry out the atmospheric experiments by Galileo and the Italian scientist
© Science Press 2021
P. Liu, A General Theory of Fluid Mechanics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6660-2_1
1
Foundation of Fluid Mechanics
1.1 Combination of Early Development of Fluid
Dynamics with Calculus
In 250 B.C., Archimedes (ancient Greeks, 287–212 B.C., as shown in
Fig. 1.1), commissioned by King Syracuse of Sicily to examine the crown,
studied the principle of force balance and proposed the famous hydrodynamic buoyancy theorem, which is also a part of hydrostatics. During this
period, the achievements of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and other ancient
Greek scientists mainly stayed at the philosophical level. At the mathematical level, Pythagoras put forward the concept that everything is a number
and discovered the Pythagorean law. After A.D. until the Renaissance, society
was dark and scientific development was slow. During the Renaissance (fourteenth to early seventeenth centuries A.D.), with the emergence of the new
capitalism, the demand for handicraft and mechanical industries greatly
promoted the development of mathematics and mechanics. During this
period, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642, as shown in Fig. 1.2)
discovered the law of inertia of motion of objects and developed thermometers and telescopes. The Italian versatile scientist Leonardo Di Ser Piero Da
Vinci (1452–1519 A.D., as shown in Fig. 1.3) published a series of qualitative
cognitive results of flow, vortices, fluid mechanics, including the qualitative
principle of bird flight, and even used vortices as an element of beauty in
many of Leonardo’s paintings (as shown in Fig. 1.4). In 1653, the French
scientist B. Pascal (1623–1662) put forward the principle of hydrostatic pressure transfer (Pascal theorem) and made a hydraulic press. Later, he continued
to carry out the atmospheric experiments by Galileo and the Italian scientist
© Science Press 2021
P. Liu, A General Theory of Fluid Mechanics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6660-2_1
1