Books on fluid and continuum mechanics written by physicists

“Since the book is on analysis, the worked examples…are selected from those problems that can be solved, rather than from those which need to be solved.”

  – Thomas K. Sherwood (1903-1976)*

      * Chemical Engineering Science, 15: 332-333 (1961).

“If you are not confused, you are not paying attention.”

  – Gregory Falkovich, Fluid Mechanics, 2/e, p. 112.

I have listed all the books on continuum, fluid, and solid mechanics written by physicists (or astronomers) of an introductory or general nature that I know of. I’ve confined the scope of this list to include works published after the Second World War and available in the English language.

I have not included more specialized works on by physicists on geophysical fluid dynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, plasma physics, microfluidics, and so on. Some elements of elasticity theory typically appear in texts on solid state and condensed matter physics, while elements of hydrodynamics less commonly appear in condensed matter physics texts – these too will be omitted here. Finally, hydrodynamics is often a canonical example of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and I have not listed books in these fields that provide extensive coverage of this connection, with the exception of the classic by DeGroot & Mazur. The reason for these omissions is that such works often fail to provide a general view of hydrodynamics, to include for instance the topic of aerodynamic lift. Any physicist who finds Bernoulli’s equation, applied to cambered airfoils, to be a satisfactory explanation of aerodynamic lift needs to explain how aerobatic aircraft can fly upside down! See further discussion at Fluid Mechanics in the Physics Curriculum. (There are certainly hazards of learning continuum mechanics from a physicist, as illustrated by Ascher Shapiro’s review of the Trefil book listed below.) Unfortunately even some of the books I have listed here fail to adequately cover aerodynamic lift and other seemingly essential topics.

I have made one concession, however, by including an Appendix on general books about astrophysical hydrodynamics. If there is popular demand, I may consider adding additional appendices on other more advanced topics.

This list is surely not complete, but I would like to make it so. If you believe you know of an omission, please contact me at (remove spaces) c t o n g “at” m a i l a p s . o r g.

Commentary on these books is being added gradually over time, so please consider this a work in progress. I provide additional commentary on Sommerfeld, Landau/Lifshitz, and Thorne/Blandford at a companion page on Continuum mechanics in the great physics courses.

  – Christopher Tong, Ph.D. (physics).

Books covering continuum mechanics

• Avadh Behari Bhatia and Ram N. Singh, 1986: Mechanics of Deformable Media. Graduate Student Series in Physics. Adam Hilger/IOP.
  • This compact book was prepared from A. B. Bhatia’s lectures and, due to his death during its writing, published posthumously. A. B. Bhatia (1921-1984) was a theorist in Canada who worked in multiple areas such as condensed matter, nuclear, astrophysics, and optics. Coverage in this book is limited to the most basic topics (e.g., nothing on boundary layers, instabilities, or turbulence, though there is a chapter on sound propagation). No solutions to problems are provided.
• Leonid M. Brekhovskikh and Valery Goncharov, 1994: Mechanics of Continua and Wave Dynamics, 2d edition. Translated by V. Vavilova. Springer Series on Wave Phenomena, vol. 1. Springer. Original Russian edition, 1982.
  • Brekhovskikh (1917-2005) was a Russian physicist and distinguished acoustician and oceanographer. The book emphasizes wave phenomena, but not to the exclusion of other topics, such as turbulence and magnetohydrodynamics, which earn their own chapters. Solutions are provided for selected problems.
• Benny Lautrup, 2011: Physics of Continuous Matter: Exotic and Everyday Phenomena in the Macroscopic World, 2d edition. CRC Press. Original edition, 2005.
  • This massive text by a Danish theoretical physicist is the most comprehensive contemporary introductory book on continuum mechanics by a physicist. It is aimed at third-year undergraduates or higher. “Answers” to odd-numbered problems are found in the back, but some are actually just hints while others outline the solution. A supporting webpage provides addenda, errata, and other apparatus.
• Steven R. Pride, 2025: An Introduction to Continuum Physics. Cambridge University Press.
  • A new book by a geophysicist, which covers continuum mechanics, electromagnetism, and Newtonian gravity. Appears to take a coarse-graining approach to develop continuum physics from its underlying discrete nature. I look forward to examining a copy when it becomes available.
• Arnold Sommerfeld, 1950: Mechanics of Deformable Bodies, 2d edition. Translated by G. Kuerti. Lectures on Theoretical Physics, vol. 2. Academic Press. Original German edition, 1943.
  • Sommerfeld (1868-1951) was a distinguished German physicist who made pivotal contributions to both classical and modern physics; four of his doctoral students (Heisenberg, Pauli, Debye, and Bethe) and three of his post-docs (Pauling, Rabi, and von Laue) later won Nobel Prizes. The coverage of topics in this book is severely limited from a 21st century perspective; for instance, boundary layers are discussed only qualitatively in a few pages. Answers and comments to problems are provided. See my further comments on this book at a companion page.
• Kip S. Thorne & Roger D. Blandford, 2021: Elasticity & Fluid Dynamics. Modern Classical Physics, vol. 3. Princeton University Press.
  • This first-year graduate-level material is also available in the authors’ massive parent text, Modern Classical Physics (2017), supported by this website. Thorne, of course, is a 2017 Nobel Laureate in Physics; co-author of the famous general relativity text, Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler; and an executive producer for the 2014 film Interstellar. Blandford is a winner of both the Crawfoord and Shaw prizes in astronomy. See my further comments on this book at a companion page.
• James S. Trefil, 1975: Introduction to the Physics of Fluids and Solids. Pergamon. Reprinted with corrections by Dover, 2010.
  • While this author is better known as a popular science writer, this book was motivated by his work as a consulting physicist, and realizing that physicists are at a disadvantage for such work if they lack much exposure to continuum mechanics. As far as I know, this is the only book on this list that discusses the liquid drop model of the nucleus. Unfortunately this book received a very negative review by Ascher Shapiro in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. Shapiro criticizes it for the omission of very basic topics (e.g., vorticity only appears in a single exercise and not in the main text at all) and “sloppy statements and arguments, if not outright error” along with “numerous naiveties”. This illustrates the hazards of learning this subject from a physicist, when others (engineers and applied mathematicians) are typically more learned in this subject.
    • A. H. Shapiro, JFM, 84: 794-796.

Books covering fluid mechanics

The “standards” on this list are Landau & Lifshitz (1997) and Tritton (1988), both classics but with different personalities. Landau/Lifshitz is obviously very theoretical, while Tritton is packed with photographs and plots of experimental data. Neither is likely suitable for a first undergraduate course in the field, but serious students of hydrodynamics will inevitably consult both. Indeed, unlike most of the books on this list, Landau/Lifshitz and Tritton are routinely cited by non-physicists in the hydrodynamics community, a rare signal of quality for works in this field written by physicists.

• Abraham Achterberg, 2016: Gas Dynamics: An Introduction with Examples from Astrophysics and Geophysics. Springer.
  • Written by a Dutch astrophysicist, this book’s title indicates its leanings. The final chapter is a set of problems, most of which are nontrivial.
• Jonathan Braithwaite, 2017: Essential Fluid Dynamics for Scientists. IOP Concise Physics. Morgan & Claypool/IOP.
  • A graduate level text by an astrophysicist, emphasizing astrophysical and geophysical applications, at the expense of others. Solutions to problems are not provided. The author wisely recommends that “since atmospheric fluid dynamics has a longer history than astrophysical fluids, astrophysicists are well advised to learn from this neighbouring field to avoid reinventing the wheel.”
• Roberto A. Capuzzo Dolcetta, 2023: Physics of Fluids. Springer. Corrected printing, 2024.
  • A treatment of fluids by an Italian astrophysicist; each chapter ends with a set of solved problems.
• Thomas E. Faber, 1995: Fluid Dynamics for Physicists. Cambridge University Press.
  • Faber (1927-2004) was both a theoretical and experimental physicist at Cambridge University and also an executive at the publishing company founded by his father. Like Tritton’s, Faber’s book is packed with photos, but unlike Tritton, it fails to include much experimental data. Faber concedes that he is but an “enthusiastic amateur” compared to other physicists who’ve written fluid dynamics books. He wrote this one so that it “may be read for pleasure as well as for instruction by physicists of any age and at almost any level of sophisticiation who want to learn fluid dynamics for themselves.” It lacks exercises, but derivations are only sketched, so that readers could certainly work through the material with pencil and paper if they chose to. A generally positive review (with specific critiques) was given by Paul Linden in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics; Peter Bradshaw offered additional criticisms in his Times Higher Education review (8 Nov 1996). Stephen Mobbs was also generally positive, but noted some unconventional and misleading sections. (The publisher’s website includes quotes from several other reviews, but I have been unable to locate the original sources.)
    • P. F. Linden, JFM, 325: 440-441.
    • S. Mobbs, Quart. J. Royal Meterorol. Soc., 122: 1015-1016.
• Gregory Falkovich, 2018: Fluid Mechanics, second edition. Cambridge University Press. Original edition, 2011, subtitled A Short Course for Physicists.
  • Written by an Israeli theoretical physicist, this very short (~200 pages) yet demanding book attempts to teach “the minimum of what every physicist, engineer and mathematician needs to know about hydrodynamics.” He expects readers to “master the basic elements” in “about two intense weeks”. Solutions to exercises are provided in the back; these usually begin with a qualitative discussion followed by a “sketch of the theory”. A supporting website is maintained by the author. Intended for both undergraduates and grad students, be aware that in places it makes use of complex variables (e.g., Sec. 1.2.4) and Hamiltonian mechanics (Sec. 1.3.4). The third and final chapter, on dispersive waves, uses analogies (conceptual and methodological) with quantum theory, “since quantum physics is to a large extent a wave physics”. The author concedes this is done in “the perverse manner of people who learnt quantum mechanics before fluid mechanics”. I find Falkovich to be almost uniquely insightful, but would not suggest it as a student’s very first text on the subject. I’ve also found that the readability of the book can be improved by watching a recording of his lectures, based on the book, which he has linked on his website. (Honestly, watching his 2022 Boulder Summer School lectures was the only way I could fully digest the first chapter.) I know of two (very positive) reviews of the first edition:
    • Salvatore Esposito, 2012. Contemporary Physics, 53 (3): 277-278.
    • Shreyas Mandre, 2013. Pure and Applied Geophysics, 170: 489-490.
• Achim Feldmeier, 2020: Theoretical Fluid Mechanics. Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. Springer.
  • A German astronomer, the author focuses the first half of the book on exact solutions of two-dimensional flow problems, while spending the second half on waves, including also a chapter on the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. There are no exercises.
• Richard Fitzpatrick, 2017: Theoretical Fluid Mechanics. Institute of Physics.
  • Lamenting the absence of fluid dynamics courses in the physics curriculum, the book was written for self-study by graduate students, and consequently includes solutions to all its problems, but lacks an index. Emphasizes astrophysical and geophysical applications. The author seems to be an astronomer-turned-plasma physicist. Tom Lancaster’s 2017 review (Contemporary Physics, 60: 203-204) is positive but notes that the book’s “no-nonsense style” leaves little room for contextualizing and motivation.
• Etienne Guyon, Jean-Pierre Hulin, Luc Petit, and Catalin D. Mitescu, 2015: Physical Hydrodynamics, 2d edition. Oxford University Press. Original French edition, 1991.
  • This French text is another with a strong experimentalists’ flavor. The original edition had no exercises, but the second edition has a small number of end-of-chapter problems, with solutions in the back. See Raymond A. Shaw’s useful review in the American Journal of Physics, 83 (12): 1061-1062 (2015).
• Roger J. Hosking and Robert L. Dewar, 2016: Fundamental Fluid Mechanics and Magnetohydrodynamics. Springer.
  • While the first author seems to be an applied mathematician, the second author appears to be a theoretical plasma physicist; both hail from Australia. This graduate level book has a strong emphasis on MHD, as its title suggests, at the expense of other subjects. Solutions to exercises are available at no cost at the publisher’s website.
• Sudhir Ranjan Jain, Bhooshan S. Paradkar, and Shashikumar M. Chitre, 2022: A Primer on Fluid Mechanics with Applications. Springer.
  • This is an expanded version of lecture notes for fourth-year physics majors by the late S. M. Chitre at the Center for Excellence in Basic Sciences, Mumbai, India. The first two authors (a nonlinear dynamicist and a plasma physicist, respectively) were once Chitre’s assistants. The book has an unusual breadth of coverage of applications, compared to other books on this list. Solutions to all problems are included.
• Tsutomu Kambe, 2007: Elementary Fluid Mechanics. World Scientific.
  • The author is a Japanese theorist. The last two chapters, on superfluid and quantized circulation, and gauge theory of ideal fluid flows, respectively, set this book apart from those written by non-physicists. Solutions are provided for all problems.
• Lev D. Landau and Evgenii M. Lifshitz, 1997: Fluid Mechanics, 2d edition, corrected reprint. Translated by J. B. Skyes and W. H. Reid. Course of Theoretical Physics, vol. 6. Butterworth-Heinemann. Original Russian edition, 1944.
  • Landau (1908-1968) was an Azerbaijani theoretical physicist and 1962 Nobel Laureate, who developed this course with Ukrainian colleague Lifshitz (1915-1985). See my further comments on this book at a companion page.
• Percival D. McCormack and Lawrence Crane, 1973: Physical Fluid Dynamics. Academic Press. [Out of print]
  • Percy McCormack (1929-2015) was an Irish physicist who later became chief of operation medicine for NASA, and still later a bio-engineering professor. His Irish colleague Lawrence J. Crane (1931-2021) was an applied mathematician. The final chapter of the book covers superfluid helium, distinguishing it from most other textbooks. There is also a chapter on particle-laden flows, a topic not treated as extensively by other physicists on this list. However, Russell J. Donnelly provided a very negative review of this book in the American Journal of Physics, and I have not seen it cited much.
• Geoffrey J. Pert, 2013: Introductory Fluid Mechanics for Physicists and Mathematicians. Wiley.
  • This text by a British physicist, who has some background in plasmas, is probably the one on this list with the most extensive discussion of aerodynamics.
• Ludwig Prandtl, 1952: Essentials of Fluid Dynamics, With Applications to Hydraulics, Aeronautics, Meteorology and other Subjects. Translated by Winifred Margaret Deans. Hafner. Original German edition, 1942. An updated version edited by H. Oertel is published in Springer’s Applied Mathematical Sciences series (2010).
  • I’ve included this book by the founder of boundary layer theory, Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953), mainly because it made T. E. Faber’s own list of such books. However, like Faber, I would not consider it a go-to for a student first learning this subject. This book grew out of some encyclopedia articles Prandtl wrote in 1913, and morphed multiple times until reaching the form of this book. It should be noted that Prandtl’s actual lectures on fluid mechanics were prepared for publication by O. G. Tietjens in 1934 (McGraw-Hill) and made available as Dover paperbacks in 1957 under the titles Fundamentals of Hydro- and Aeromechanics (translated by L. Rosenhead) and Applied Hydro- and Aeromechanics (translated by J. P. Den Hartog). A pre-WWII English translation of a selections from the 11th edition of the Muller-Pouillets Lehrbuch der Physik on The Physics of Solids and Fluids, with Recent Developments, by Paul Peter Ewald, Theodor Poschl, and Ludwig Prandtl, was published by Blackie in 1930. The translators were John Dougall and Winifred Margaret Deans.
• Sarada G. Rajeev, 2018: Fluid Mechanics: A Geometrical Point of View. Oxford University Press.
  • Unusual for its emphasis on dynamical systems, Lie algebra, Riemannian geometry, and the use of the Hamiltonian formulation; also covers numerical computation, chaotic advection, and even renormalization. Maybe this is what happens when a particle theorist writes about hydrodynamics 🙂.
• Oded Regev, Orkan M. Umurhan, and Philip A. Yecko, 2016: Modern Fluid Dynamics for Physics and Astrophysics. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer.
  • This book is based on an Israeli graduate-level course. Solutions to problems are not provided. See the useful review by astrophysicist Giuseppe Lodato in the May 2017 issue of Physics Today.
• Michel Rieutord, 2015: Fluid Dynamics: An Introduction. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer.
  • A French astrophysicist’s presentation of fluid dynamics; includes chapters on magnetohydrodynamics and kinetic theory. Provides solutions to exercises.
• Emmanuil G. Sinaiski, 2011: Hydromechanics: Theory and Fundamentals. Translated by Moritz Braun. Wiley-VCH.
  • The author has a Ph.D. in mathematics and physics, and a Dr. Eng. Sci. in petroleum engineering, from Russian universities. The book is based on lectures he gave at the Gubkin State University of Oil and Gas, Moscow. This book emphasizes the continuum mechanics foundations of fluid mechanics, and includes extensive mathematical appendices on vector and tensor analysis, differential geometry, probability theory, and complex analysis. No exercises are included.

• David Tong, 2025: Fluid Mechanics. Cambridge University Press.

  • Tong is a theoretical physicist (no relation) in the U.K. His Lectures on Theoretical Physics are available online and are very popular. Cambridge University Press appears to be releasing paperback versions of the first four volumes in the summer of 2025. Volume 4 is on Fluid Mechanics.
• David J. Tritton, 1988: Physical Fluid Dynamics, 2d edition. Oxford University Press. (Original edition, 1977.)
  • D. J. Tritton (1935-1998) was trained as an experimental hydrodynamicist, and had broad interests, with particular involvement in geophysics and planetary physics. This book emphasizes experimental and observational results, along with geophysical applications (not surprisingly), and has a set of problems, hints, and answers in the back.
• Hendrik Jan van Eerten, 2024: Introduction to Fluid Dynamics in Physics and Astrophysics. CRC Press.
  • Befitting its astrophysicist author, this book has a strong astrophysical bent, along with a final chapter on computational fluid dynamics using the finite volume method. It includes chapters on Lagrangian fluid dynamics, special relativity, plasma physics, atmospheres and stellar structures, and accretion flow, among others. Most examples are drawn from astrophysics. Abbreviated answers to selected problems appear in the back. The computational material in the book is supported by a Github site, which also has a running list of errata.

Books covering solid mechanics

I am admittedly very unfamiliar with the literature in this field, so this section is especially prone to incompleteness. (I am grateful to Prof. James Hanna for pointing me to the Green/Zerna and Audoly/Pomeau books.)

• Basile Audoly and Yves Pomeau, 2010: Elasticity and Geometry: From Hair Curls to the Non-Linear Response of Shells. Oxford University Press.
• Albert E. Green and Wolfgang Zerna, 2012: Theoretical Elasticity, 2d edition (reprint). Dover. Original edition published in 1954 by Oxford University Press.
• Lev D. Landau and Evgenii M Lifshitz, 1986: Theory of Elasticity, 3d ed., revised and enlarged by E. M. Lifshitz, A. M. Kosevich, and L. P. Pitaevskii. Translated by J. B. Sykes and W. H. Reid. Course of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 7. Butterworth-Heinemann. Original Russian edition, 1944.
• Alister G. McLellan, 1980: The Classical Thermodynamics of Deformable Materials. Cambridge Monographs on Physics. Cambridge University Press.
• Adrian P. Sutton, 2020: Physics of Elasticity and Crystal Defects. Oxford Series on Materials Modelling. Oxford University Press.
• Jerome H. Weiner, 2002: Statistical Mechanics of Elasticity, 2d edition. Dover. (Reissued 2017.)

Books covering acoustics

Despite the relatively few physicists who work in acoustics in recent decades, a surprisingly large number of the key books in the field have been written by physicists. Lord Rayleigh’s 19th century classic Theory of Sound ranks first among these. (Rayleigh also won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics.) As acoustics deserves a separate site of its own, which is beyond the scope of my present efforts, I will simply list a sampling of fairly general works on acoustics that have been written by physicists, without further commentary.

• L. Beranek, 1954: Acoustics. McGraw-Hill Electrical and Electronic Engineering Series. McGraw-Hill. Reprinted by the Acoustical Society of America, 1986.
• R. E. Berg and D. G. Stork, 2004: The Physics of Sound, 3d edition. Prentice Hall (now Pearson).
• D. T. Blackstock, 2000: Fundamentals of Physical Acoustics. Wiley.
• S. L. Garrett, 2020: Understanding Acoustics: An Experimentalist’s View of Acoustics and Vibration, 2d edition. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer.
• L. E. Kinsler, A. R. Frey, A. B. Coppens, and J. V. Sanders, 1999: Fundamentals of Acoustics, 4th edition. Wiley.
• H. Kuttruff, 2006: Acoustics: An Introduction. CRC Press.
• S.-Y. Lee, 2021: Fundamental Physics of Sound. World Scientific.
• P. M. Morse and K. U. Ingard, 1968: Theoretical Acoustics. International Series in Pure and Applied Physics. McGraw-Hill. Reprinted by Princeton University Press, 1986.
• A. D. Pierce, 1994: Acoustics: An Introduction to its Physical Principles and Applications, 3d edition. Acoustical Society of America. Reprinted by Springer, 2019.
• T. D. Rossing and N. H. Fletcher, 2004: Principles of Vibration and Sound, 2d edition. Springer.
• T. D. Rossing, F. R. Moore, and P. A. Wheeler, 2002: The Science of Sound, 3d edition. Pearson Addison Wesley.
• E. Skudrzyk, 1971: The Foundations of Acoustics: Basic Mathematics and Basic Acoustics. Springer.

Other books by physicists that you should be aware of

As a point of personal privilege, I want to include a few other titles on a more subjective basis.

• David J. Barber and Rodney Loudon, 1989: An Introduction to the Properties of Condensed Matter. Cambridge University Press.
  • This undergraduate text is to a large extent just a book on the continuum mechanics of solids and liquids, written by two British physicists. The book seems to be a descendent of a now-extinct tradition of physics texts in the U.K. for courses on the properties of matter, such as Newman and Searle’s The General Properties of Matter (5/e, Edward Arnold, 1963; originally published in 1929), Cottrell’s Properties of Matter (Wiley, 1964), and Sprackling’s Liquids and Solids (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985). Although these books do cover solid and fluid mechanics, among other topics, I won’t try to discuss or enumerate them here. Barber and Loudon may be the only one still in print, so it’s worthy of inclusion on this page.
• Sybren R. DeGroot and Peter Mazur, 1984: Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Dover. (Original edition published by North-Holland, 1962.)
  • A foundational monograph on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. Many authors in the nonequilbrium statistical physics literature cite DeGroot & Mazur as a source for hydrodynamics. DeGroot (1916-1994) was a Danish theorist, and Mazur (1922-2001) was of Austrian extraction; both worked in the Netherlands.
• Phuong Mai Dinh, Jesus Navarro, and Eric Suraud, 2018: An Introduction to Quantum Fluids. CRC Press.
  • It turns out that the topic of quantum fluids is more general than just superfluids. This book adopts a fairly wide perspective, including electron fluids, the nucleus (including the liquid drop model), and high density fluids (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and quark-gluon plasma). I have emphasized classical fluids on this site, but at least one book on quantum fluids should be mentioned here. (Naturally there are a number of more specific books on superfluids and Bose-Einstein condensates, which I have not attempted to enumerate.)
• Samuel A. Elder and Jerome Williams, 1996: Fluid Physics for Oceanographers and Physicists: An Introduction to Incompressible Flow, 2d edition. Butterworth Heinemann.
  • Derived from a course taught in the physics department at the U.S. Naval Academy, offered to physical oceanography, dynamic meteorology, and physics majors, this book has a definite geophysical leaning. The authors’ own comments on the book are worth noting: “The most appreciative audience for a book of this type has proven to be among undergraduate students in oceanography, geology, biology and other environmental sciences, who tend to lack a rigorous background in math and physics. Our text is less demanding, mathematically, than most other fluid mechanics texts on the market, though it covers essentially all the basic equations of incompressible flow. Furthermore, because it is short, the book can be priced attractively.” For these reasons I have not included this book in the main lists above, though it deserves mention here for completeness’ sake.
• Uriel Frisch, 1995: Turbulence: The Legacy of A. N. Kolmogorov. Cambridge University Press.
  • Several physicists have written books on turbulence, and if your interests turn in this direction, you will get to know them. However if not, you should still consider acquiring some literacy in the field by reading this exposition, which gives particular attention to Kolmogorov’s 1941 scaling theory, “one of the very few exact and nontrivial results in the field”.
• Christian Fronsdal, 2020: Adiabatic Thermodynamics of Fluids: From Hydrodynamics to General Relativity. World Scientific.
  • This idiosyncratic book by an American elementary particle theorist declares at the beginning of the first chapter, “Thermodynamics is an extension of hydrodynamics by temperature.” In the foreword, the author writes, “This book is my attempt to understand thermodynamics, in the formulation as a Eulerian field theory of temperature, pressure, densities and entropies, and completely integrated with hydrodynamics.” Action principles are central to the author’s thinking. He covers superfluid helium and general relativity, as well as fluid mixtures, planetary atmospheres, and a theory of his own, “conservative hydrodynamics”, at least according to the draft chapters on his website.
• Peter Hertel, 2012: Continuum Physics. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer.
  • This compact book includes continuum mechanics and thermodynamics, but ranges well beyond these to discuss other topics in continuum physics, including electromagnetic, thermoelectric and optical phenomena, including photonics. Coverage has breadth but lacks depth; perhaps its main value is in providing cultural literacy. The book lacks both problems and an index. Hertel (1938-2017) was a German theoretical physicist.
• Roman Jackiw, 2002: Lectures on Fluid Dynamics: A Particle Theorist’s View of Supersymmetric, Non-Abelian, Noncommutative Fluid Mechanics and d-Branes. Springer.
  • Presents a new formulation of hydrodynamics, “an ancient field theory, but which can be enhanced by the ideas that we gleaned from particle physics.”
• Robert Bruce Lindsay, 1960: Mechanical Radiation. The International Series in Pure and Applied Physics. McGraw-Hill. [Out of print]
  • Focuses on wave phenomena in various classical media: strings, membranes, rods, plates, elastic media, incompressible fluids, sound in fluids, and applictions in acoustics and geophysics, oceanography, and meteorology. The final chapter delves into a range of special topics such as statistical physics, electron “hydrodynamics” in superconductivity, and liquid helium. Lindsay (1900-1985) was an American theorist particularly active in acoustics.
• Hans J. Lugt, 1983: Vortex Flow in Nature and Technology. Wiley-Interscience. (Original German edition, 1979. English edition reprinted by Krieger, 1995.) [Out of print]
  • A surprisingly nontechnical exposition of vortex flow, a central concept in hydrodynamics. Packed with illustrations, it would make an excellent introduction to hydrodynamics for a student who hasn’t yet mastered vector calculus, yet the book can also grip the attention of a seasoned physicist. This book deserves to be better known in the fluid mechanics community. Lugt is a German physicist who worked at the U.S. Navy’s David Taylor Model Basin. Unfortunately the book received a blisteringly negative review from Bruce Morton in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, mainly due to the “superficial” approach.
    • B. Morton, JFM, 143: 468-470.
• Grigory Vekstein, 2013: Physics of Continuous Media: Problems and Solutions in Electromagnetism, Fluid Mechanics, and MHD, 2d edition. CRC Press.
  • Includes electrodynamics in addition to fluid mechanics, magnetohydrodynamics, and elasticity. Unfortunately the author, a solar and plasma physicist, passed away in 2021, a victim of COVID.

Having mentioned Lord Rayleigh, Lev Landau, and Kip Thorne above, I can’t fail to mention three other Nobel laureates in physics:

• Hannes Alfven, 1950: Cosmical Electrodynamics. International Series of Monographs on Physics. Oxford University Press.
  • Alfven (1908-1995) is the founder of modern magnetohydrodynamics, a topic he covers in this book. Alven won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to plasma physics. A second edition in 1963, co-authored with Carl-Gunne Falthammar, was subtitled Fundamental Principles.
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 1981: Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability. Dover. (Original edition published in the International Series of Monographs on Physics, by Oxford University Press, 1961.)
  • A landmark contribution by a legendary astrophysicist. Anyone interested in hydrodynamic instabilities must own this book. Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. (In 2011 Edward A. Spiegel edited and published Chandrasekhar’s 1954 lectures on The Theory of Turbulence.)
• Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Francoise Brochard-Wyart, and David Quere, 2004: Capillarity and Wetting: Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves. Translated by Axel Reisinger. Springer.
  • P.-G. de Gennes (1932-2007) won the 1991 Nobel Prize in physics, the first for soft matter physics. Brochard-Wyart was one of his students, and Quere was one of hers. The book, written specifically for students, is intended to provide a more qualitative, “impressionistic” account of the phenomena covered, at the expense of “rigor” and fancy mathematics.

Finally, though it breaks my rule about only post-WWII books, for completeness I will mention two more Nobel laureates:

• Wilhelm Wien, 1900: Lehrbuch der Hydrodynamik. S. Hirzel.
  • As far as I know, this German text has never been translated into English. Wien also served on Werner Heisenberg’s dissertation committee, according to David Cassidy. Wien accepted Heisenberg’s dissertation paper, on the transition to turbulence in a channel flow, for publication in the Annalen der Physik, but almost flunked Heisenberg for his incompetence in matters of experimental physics.
• Max Planck, 1932: The Mechanics of Deformable Bodies. Translated by Henry L. Brose. Introduction to Theoretical Physics, vol. 2. Macmillan.
  • This is translated from the third German edition; the original German text is dated 1919. The book covers both solid and fluid mechanics. Max Planck (1858-1947) is, of course, the founder of quantum mechanics.

As an aside, it is this section of this page where female physicists are first mentioned, both French: Phuong Mai Dinh and Francoise Brochard-Wyart. The British astronomer Cathie Clark will be noted in Appendix A below. I know of a few other female physicist authors of fluids books: Elisabeth Guazzelli (also French, co-author of A Physical Introduction to Suspension Dynamics), Barbara Weibel-Mihalas (American, co-author of Foundations of Radiation Hydrodynamics), Rita Meyer-Spasche (German, author of Pattern Formation in Viscous Flows), and Emily Ching (Hong Kong, author of Statistics and Scaling in Turbulent Rayleigh-Benard Convection). I’m sure that I’m missing others. Of course there are books by female mathematicians, engineers, and geoscientists on fluid mechanics too.

A book not written by a physicist, that attempts a physics perspective, is Young J. Moon’s Introduction to Fluid Dynamics: Understanding Fundamental Physics (Wiley, 2022). The author is a Korean aeronautical engineer.

Some reflections on the books discussed

In this section I focus on the books listed in the first two sections, on continuum and fluid mechanics.

A chronological perspective

In the early years of the nuclear age, Sommerfeld’s lectures appeared in English in 1950, and Prandtl’s book in 1952, both near the end of their authors’ lives. The first English edition of Landau & Lifshitz appeared in 1959. All three of these books have roots in the pre-WWII period. All three indeed remained staples for years; though most of the books in fluid mechanics in this era were written by nonphysicists, such as Batchelor’s masterpiece (1967). It was not until the 1970s that a few more physicists realized that their perspective could be useful - McCormack & Crane (1973), Trefil (1975), and Tritton (1977). It seems that only the third of these was an undisputed success. The 1980s saw the appearance of Bhatia & Singh (1984), the first English edition of Brekhovskikh & Goncharov (1985), and second editions of the classics, Landau & Lifshitz (1987) and Tritton (1988). The 1990s greeted the second edition of Brekhovskikh & Goncharov (1994) and the landmark contribution of Faber (1995). Faber claimed to know of only three previous fluid dynamics books written by physicists: Ludwig Prandtl’s Essentials of Fluid Dynamics and the classics by Landau/Lifshitz and Tritton – basically snubbing the other authors mentioned in this paragraph, including Arnold Sommerfeld!

The first decade of the 21st century witnessed the first English edition of Guyon et al. (2001), the first edition of Lautrup (2005), and Kambe’s contribution (2007). However the second decade welcomed an outburst of physicists on our subject: Sinaiski (2011), Falkovich (2011, 2018), Pert (2013), Rieutord (2015), Achterberg (2016), Regev et al. (2016), Hosking & Dewar (2016), Braithwaite (2017), Fitzpatrick (2017), Thorne & Blandford (2017), Rajeev (2018), Feldmeier (2020), as well as second editions of Lautrup (2011) and Guyon et al (2015). Thus, the most recent decade has single-handedly eliminated the dearth of general and introductory books on fluid mechanics written by physicists! So far this decade we have only Jain et al. (2022), Capuzzo Dolcetta (2023), van Eerten (2024), and Pride (2025).

A topical perspective

Now let’s visit a few topics that may be of special interest to physicists.

Kinetic theory of gases. It is possible to derive the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations as approximations from the Boltzmann transport equation, but this is a topic at best only alluded to in books on this list. The topic fits better in a statistical physics text rather than a fluid mechanics one. Sommerfeld covers it in Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics (though that particular section was written by the editors after his death) and Landau/Lifshitz covers it in Physical Kinetics (again, prepared after Landau’s death by Lifshitz and Pitaevskii). The only two books on this list that includes a chapter on this topic are Rieutord and Jain et al. Hosking and Dewar discuss it more briefly in Sec. 2.6 of their book, as do Feldmeier in his Sec. 2.9, and van Eerten in his Sec. 2.4. Readers are likely to find this topic better covered in more specialized works on plasma physics and astrophysical plasmas. Pride uses a more generic “averaging” approach over discrete matter to derive continuum mechanical laws, without explicitly invoking any kinetic theories of matter.

Magnetohydrodynamics. This topic is well covered in plasma physics texts, and there is an entire genre of books on astrophysical hydrodynamics that deal with MHD too. Landau/Lifshitz cover it in their Electrodynamics of Continuous Media rather than in Fluid Mechanics. However, it’s often good to give physics students studying fluids an introduction to the topic. Astrophysicists Braithwaite, Rieutord, and Thorne/Blandford devote entire chapters to MHD, as do Brekhovskikh & Goncharov, Regev et al., and Jain et al. MHD is so emphasized in Hosking & Dewar that it is part of the title of their book. Astrophysicist van Eerten covers MHD in his chapter (12) on plasma physics. Meanwhile Faber, Guyon et al., and Pride devote only a section of a chapter to the topic, but at least it’s included.

Superfluid hydrodynamics. This is an arena where frictionless flow can actually be realized; phenomena such as the “fountain effect”, “second sound”, and circulation quantization (line vortices) can be studied. A number of Nobel laureates in physics have contributed to these studies. However, even among fluid dynamics books by physicists, this topic is rarely covered. Only Landau/Lifshitz, McCormack/Crane, Kambe, and Jain et al. have entire chapters on this subject; Guyon et al. include a very brief appendix (7A), and Capuzzo Dolecetta has one section (6.2) for it. Trefil and Thorne/Blandford deal with superfluid helium only in the exercises, using the two-fluid model.

Landau, of course, is a primary contributor to the theory of superfluidity, and he (and independently, Laszlo Tisza) proposed the two-fluid model. Landau/Lifshitz’s Fluid Mechanics covers the macroscopic theory (Ch. 16), while their Statistical Physics, Part 2 (Ch. 3), covers the microscopic theory. Kambe discusses the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and differences between dilute alkali atom superfluids and liquid helium. However, in my opinion coverage in the books on this list only serves to provide some cultural literacy to the reader on this topic, which receives more thorough treatments in advanced statistical physics or condensed matter courses.

Relativistic fluids. This topic is even less popular among the books on this list. Only Landau/Lifshitz (Ch. 15) and van Eerten (Ch. 8) have a whole chapter for it, and most others on this list fail to even bring it up. Not surprisingingly, Thorne/Blandford give their readers a taste of ideal relativistic hydrodynamics, referring them to MTW’s Gravitation for relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. However, Achterberg (and others) consider MTW’s treatment incorrect. Capuzzo Dolcetta has one section on relativistic fluids (Sec. 6.1). Relativistic hydrodynamics can be a source of apparent paradoxes, such as observer-dependent hydrodynamic instability (see this discussion by Gabriel Denicol of recent work by Lorenzo Gavassino, for instance) or even James Supplee’s submarine paradox about observer-dependent buoyancy (see this recent paper on a related problem by Hrovje Nikolic). Other thoughts on relativistic fluid dynamics may be found in this lecture by Pavel Kovtun, “Hydrodynamics Beyond Hydrodynamics”. One of his take-aways is that “Relativistic hydrodynamics probably does not exist as a universal low-energy classical theory, unlike Galilean hydrodynamics”!

Non-Newtonian fluids. This is a topic surprisingly mentioned at best in passing by most books on this list. Only Faber devotes an entire chapter (10) to the topic, though he includes plasmas and superfluid helium in the same chapter. Guyon et al (Sec. 4.4) and Rieutord (Sec. 1.9) do provide some coverage, as do (very briefly) McCormack & Crane (Sec. 1.5) and Sinaiski (Sec. 13.1). The topic is more likely to be discussed in texts on soft condensed matter physics.

Pseudomomentum (Quasimomentum). This is a topic physicists usually meet in solid state physics, though Rudolf Peierls discussed it in optics too. Falkovich discusses it in the setting of induced mass (sometimes called added mass, or virtual mass) of an object moving through an ideal fluid. He dares to criticize Landau/Lifshitz’s treatment of induced mass as “misleading in not distinguishing between momentum and quasi-momentum”. Further discussion of pseudomomentum in continuum mechanics can be found in Singh and Hanna, 2021, “Pseudomomentum: origins and consequences”, Zeitschrift fur Angewandte Mathematik und Physik, 72: 122. See also Peierls’ Surprises in Theoretical Physics and especially More Surprises in Theoretical Physics (Princeton Unversity Press, 1979 and 1991, respectively) and his Varenna Lectures (published in Highlights of Condensed-Matter Theory, North-Holland, 1985).

Appendix A: General books on astrophysical hydrodynamics.

• Eduardo Battaner, 1996: Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics. Cambridge Univeristy Press.
• Arnab Rai Choudhuri, 1998: The Physics of Fluids and Plasmas: An Introduction for Astrophysicists. Cambridge University Press.
• Cathie J. Clarke and Robert F. Carswell, 2007: Principles of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics. Cambridge.
• Shoji Kato and Jun Fukue, 2020: Fundamentals of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics: Hydrodynamics, Magnetohydrodynamics, and Radiation Hydrodynamics. Astronomy and Astrophysics Library. Springer.
• Vinod Krishan, 1999: Astrophysical Plasmas and Fluids. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol. 235. Springer.
• James E. Pringle and Andrew King, 2007: Astrophysical Flows. Cambridge University Press.
• Steven N. Shore, 2007: Astrophysical Hydrodynamics: An Introduction, 2d edition. Wiley-VCH.
• Frank H. Shu, 1992: The Physics of Astrophysics. Vol. 2: Gas Dynamics. University Science Books.
• Michael J. Thompson, 2006: An Introduction to Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics. Imperial College Press/World Scientific.
• Jean-Paul Zahn and Jean Zinn-Justin (eds.), 1993: Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics. Proceedings of the Les Houches Summer School, Course XLVII, 29 June-31 July 1987. North-Holland.

As mentioned above, van Eerten (2024)’s book includes substantial astrophysical content.

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