Biographies of twelve of the leading personalities in turbulence research chart the development of the subject from Reynolds onward.

List of contributors; Preface Peter Davidson, Yukio Kaneda, Keith Moffatt and Katepalli Sreenivasan; 1. Osborne Reynolds: a turbulent life Brian Launder and Derek Jackson; 2. Prandtl and the Göttingen school Eberhard Bodenschatz and Michael Eckert; 3. Theodore von Kármán A. Leonard and N. Peters; 4. G. I. Taylor: the inspiration behind the Cambridge school Katepalli Sreenivasan; 5. Lewis Fry Richardson Roberto Benzi; 6. The Russian school Gregory Falkovich; 7. Stanley Corrsin Charles Meneveau and James J. Riley; 8. George Batchelor: the post-war renaissance of research in turbulence H. K. Moffatt; 9. A. A. Townsend Ivan Marusic and Timothy B. Nickels; 10. Robert H. Kraichnan Gregory Eyink and Uriel Frisch; 11. Satish Dhawan Roddam Narasimha; 12. Philip G. Saffman Dale I. Pullin and Daniel I. Meiron; 13. Epilogue: a turbulence timeline Peter Davidson, Yukio Kaneda, Keith Moffatt and Katepalli Sreenivasan.