ROTTA

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

\

1.1.1912 Wuppertal/D - 14.3.2005 Göttingen/D

\

Julius Rotta lost his father as a young boy and had to go through extremely hard times. He started as a technical drawer and tried to understand the basis of the designs. In 1934 he became a collaborator of the Rohrbach aviation company in Berlin and continued from 1938 with Focke-Wulf Aircraft in Bremen. He took interest in fluid mechanics and published a first paper on the wing theory in 1942. After World War II Rotta came into contact with Albert Betz (1885-1968) of Göttingen University who was astonished to note that Rotta had no university degree. The latter thus worked in isentropic turbulence and presented first results during the 1948 GAMM meeting in Göttingen. Both Prandtl and Heisenberg, who initiated the theory of turbulence, were impressed by Rotta's findings. Rotta thus developed into a successor of the two founders of modern turbulence.

\

Rotta has worked all over his life on turbulence. Two noteworthy papers published in the early 1950s relate to the turbulent velocity distribution close to walls, thereby extending the approach of Prandtl and von Karman. The works over the next twenty years were summarized in his 1972 book. It is subdivided into the five following main chapters: (1) General bases, (2) Homogeneous turbulence, (3) Turbulent shear flows, (4) Description of turbulent flows and (5) Heat transfer, flows with strong density gradients and statistical fluid mechanics. Rotta presented in 1990 a historical account on the Aerodynamic Laboratory of his teacher Prandtl up to 1925. He was awarded in 2000 the Ludwig-Prandtl Ring for his achievements in fluid mechanics.

\

_{Meier, U. (2000). Verleihung des Ludwig-Prandtl Rings 2000 an Dr.-Ing. E.h. Julius C. Rotta.}

_{Deutscher Luftund Raumfahrtkongress: Leipzig. P}

_{Rotta, J. (1950). Das in Wandnähe gültige Geschwindigkeitsgesetz turbulenter Strömungen. Ingenieur Archiv 18: 277-280.}

_{Rotta, J. (1951). Berechnung der turbulenten Grenzschichten. Ingenieur Archiv 19: 31-41. Rotta, J. (1962). Turbulent boundary layers in incompressible flow. Progress in Aeronautical Sciences 2: 1-219.}

_{Rotta, J. (1966). Über die Geschwindigkeitsverteilung turbulenter Strömung in der Nähe poröser Wände. ZAMM 46: T213-T215.}

_{Rotta, J. (1972). Turbulente Strömungen. Teubner: Stuttgart.}

_{Rotta, J. (1990). Die Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt in Göttingen, ein Werk Ludwig Prandtls.}

_{Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht: Göttingen.}