Microbiological fluid mechanics: a tribute to Sir James Lighthill

The choice of title of this presentation comes from two papers that James Lighthill published in the issue of Journal of Engineering Mathematics commemorating H. A. Lorentz's famous 1896 paper on fluid mechanics [1]. This paper will discuss Lighthill's significant contribution to microbiological fluid mechanics, both through his own work and his postgraduate and postdoctoral students, of which this author is one! The paper introduces the wide range of interests that Lighthill had in biofluid-dynamics and then moves to concentrate on contributions to microbiological fluid mechanics. The presentation successively considers eukaryotic flagellar propulsion, prokaryotic flagellar propulsion, filter feeding and ciliary propulsion. In the Spirit of Lighthill, the paper concludes with a list of topics of research in the area that have been identified for further study. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.