Batchelor Prize 2008

Cambridge University Press is delighted to announce that Professor Howard Stone has been chosen as the winner of the inaugural Batchelor Prize sponsored by Journal of Fluid Mechanics. Read Professor Stone's Batchelor Prize Lecture.

Howard Stone, Vicky Joseph Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University, was selected by the Batchelor Prize Committee to receive this prestigious award to recognize the breadth and depth of his research over the ten-year period 1998-2007 and for his widely acknowledged leadership in fluid mechanics generally. View his complete list of publications.

We decided to find out more about the Prize winner and his reaction to winning the award. Click here to read the press release: An interview with Professor Howard Stone, winner of the Batchelor Prize for Fluid Mechanics.

Simon Ross, Journals Director of Cambridge University Press, said that "The Batchelor Prize was established by Journal of Fluid Mechanics and IUTAM to recognise the achievements of an active scientist who has made significant research contributions to fluid mechanics over the previous decade. We are delighted that Howard Stone has been chosen as the first recipient of the Prize and, as publishers of Journal of Fluid Mechanics, are honoured to be a part of this worthy enterprise."

Howard Stone is particularly well-known for his pioneering studies in microfluids, including:

• understanding the "slip" boundary condition
• foam drainage, especially the proposing and testing of a new generalised foam drainage equation
• surface tension and surfactant effects
• biological fluid dynamics
• colloidal dynamics

He has shown a remarkable capacity for the devising and analysis of simple model problems which lead to important fundamental understandings and practical applications using theoretical, computational and experimental methods. Much of this research is available in Journal of Fluid Mechanics on Cambridge Journals Online, including:

On self-propulsion of micro-machines at low Reynolds number: Purcell's three-link swimmer
L. E. Becker, S. A. Koehler and H. A. Stone

The effect of surface tension on rimming flows in a partially filled rotating cylinder
J. Ashmore, A. E. Hosoi and H. A. Stone

Lubrication analysis and boundary integral simulations of a viscous micropump
R. F. Day and H. A. Stone

Hydrodynamics of particles embedded in a flat surfactant layer overlying a subphase of finite depth

H. A. Stone and A. Ajdari

Oscillatory motions of circular disks and nearly spherical particles in viscous flows
W. Zhang and H. A. Stone

Howard Stone has served the fluid mechanics community as Chair of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics in 2006, as Journal of Fluid Mechanics for ten years and as an advisor and mentor for numerous students (undergraduate as well as graduate) and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom have now embarked on distinguished careers of their own.

The Batchelor Prize of $25,000 was awarded during the opening Ceremony of the 22nd International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Adelaide on Monday, 25 August 2008. Howard Stone presented a lecture based on some of this winning research in the morning of Wednesday, 27 August 2008 at the same Congress, a version of which is published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics and made freely available on Cambridge Journals Online.

Cambridge University Press and Journal of Fluid Mechanics would like to offer their sincerest congratulations to Howard Stone on winning the inaugural Batchelor Prize.