Prandtl and the G\"ottingen School

Abstract

This is a historical review of "Prandtl and the G\"ottingen School" from his first work in 1898 to after WWII. We report the development of the boundary layer theory and the investigations that lead Ludwig Prandtl in the spring of 1945 to use a energy cascade model to derive for fully developed turbulence the Kolmogrov length scale. Working at the end of WWII he was not aware of the work by Kolmogorov. Thus Ludwig Prandtl was before Onsager, von Weiz\"acker, and Heisenberg in rederiving parts of K41 theory. In our historical analysis we rely heavily on exchanges between Ludwig Prandtl with Theodore von K\'arm\'an and Goeffrey Ingram Taylor and on the original notes by Ludwig Prandtl and others.