Osborne Reynolds

Osborne Reynolds was an Irish-born British innovator in the understanding of fluid dynamics, born in Belfast on 23 August 1842, whose studies of heat transfer between solids and fluids also brought improvements in boiler and condenser design. He moved soon after birth to Dedham, Essex, where his father, a clergyman, headmaster and able mathematician, was his chief teacher. Before university he worked as an apprentice at the workshop of a shipbuilder in Stony Stratford, then attended Queens College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1867 as the seventh wrangler in mathematics. He spent his entire career at what is now the University of Manchester, was elected to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1869 and as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1877, and was awarded the Royal Medal in 1888. He most famously studied the conditions in which the flow of fluid in pipes changes from laminar to turbulent flow, and he also studied the properties of granular materials.