In August 1904 Ludwig Prandtl, a 29-year old professor of mechanics at the Technical University of Hanover, presented a remarkable paper at the Third International Mathematical Congress in Heidelberg. The paper was a scientific time bomb — it made no great impact at the congress, and was not translated into English until 1928. But by the 1920s and 1930s, the powerful idea in that paper and the reputation of its author had spread across the world, helping to create modern fluid dynamics out of ancient hydraulics and nineteenth-century hydrodynamics.
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