International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 31 (2010) 250

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Tribute to Professor Rainer Friedrich on his 70th birthday

On May 10, 2010 Professor Rainer Friedrich of the Technical
University of Munich, celebrated his 70th birthday. It is indeed
one of those very happy coincidences that this event should haveoccurred on the eve of publication of this special issue of selected
papers from the TSFP6 conference; for, Professor Friedrich has, forthe last four TSFP symposia, been a member of the organizing committee of what has become established as the leading international
conference series on turbulent shear ﬂow phenomena. All those
conferences have been the subject of much cited special issues ofthis journal and it is therefore appropriate that the present special
issue be dedicated in his honour.
Rainer Friedrich could be said to be the epitome of ‘TUM man’;for his links with the Technical University go back 50 years and,apart from two short periods away, his development from undergraduate to research student; from research associate to professor
has all taken place in Munich. His early research tackled problemson the kinetic theory of gases, both his doctoral and habilitationtheses being in this area. Thereafter, however, his research interests shifted to transport processes in porous media and to nonlinear transport mechanisms. Thus, by the time of his appointment toa C3 Professorship in 1978, he had embarked on turbulent ﬂow research, a subject that was to become the dominant theme in his
professional life for the next 30 years. He quickly realised thatthe techniques of direct numerical simulation and large-eddy simulation which had emerged a decade earlier in the USA and Japan

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provided a powerful route for revealing the essential physics ofturbulent ﬂow. Over the 1980s and 1990s a succession of inﬂuential papers using these approaches on shock-wave/turbulenceinteraction and compressibility effects on wall-bounded turbulence ﬁrmly established him as an international leader in this ﬁeld.
The year 1990 marked a major step in his involvement in conference organization for, with Ulrich Schumann, he co-chaired
the 8th Symposium on Turbulent Shear Flows (the predecessor ofthe TSFP series) that was held very successfully at TUM the yearfollowing. His experience of this project by no means deterredhim for he subsequently became the lead organizer of the Euromech 412 Colloquium ‘Advances in LES of Complex Flows’ andco-organized three biennial ERCOFTAC workshops on direct andlarge-eddy simulation, subsequently assisting in editing their proceedings published by Springer. Then, as noted in the opening paragraph, in 2002 he joined the TSFP Organizing Committee, a rolethat continues to this day.
In October 2005 Rainer Friedrich retired from his university
professorship. However, that change of role is hardly visible whenviewing his external contributions for he masterminded the 2007
TSFP conference in Munich and in 2008 delivered a keynote lectureon the DNS of compressible ﬂows at the latest DNS-LES workshop
in Trieste.
Yet, despite his numerous major contributions to the scienceand organizational presentation of DNS and LES, what those whoknow Rainer particularly recall are his exceptional kindness, histhoughtfulness and his modesty. From his colleagues and former
research students at TUM we have heard of their deep gratitude
for the careful nurturing he provided during their formative years
but also his encouragement for them to proceed independently
when their research had reached maturity; and for his wise yet
conciliatory leadership throughout.
Thus, as he embarks with energy and enthusiasm on his eighth
decade and with the unswerving support of his wife, Hildegard, wewish Rainer exciting and fruitful years ahead, driven by his undiminished curiosity and optimism.
Tom Gatski
Nobuhide KasagiBrian Launder
Editors in Chief
Frank Schmidt
Editor at Large
Available online 14 May 2010