Philip Saffman

Education and early life Saffman was born to a Jewish family in Leeds, England, and educated at Roundhay School and Trinity College, Cambridge which he entered aged 15.

Career and research Saffman started his academic career as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, then joined King's College London as a Reader. a phenomenon important for its applications in enhanced oil recovery, and for the Saffman–Delbrück model of protein diffusion in membranes which he published with his Caltech colleague and Pasadena neighbour Max Delbrück. He made important contributions to the theory of vorticity arising from the motion of ships and aircraft through water and air; his work on wake turbulence led the airlines to increase the minimum time between takeoffs of aircraft on the same runway. Saffman also studied the flow of spheroidal particles in a fluid, such as bubbles in a carbonated beverage or corpuscles in blood; his work overturned previous assumptions that inertia was an important factor in these particles' motion and showed instead that Non-Newtonian properties of fluids play a significant role.

Along with his many research papers, surveying a field to which he had been a principal contributor. Russel E. Caflisch writes that "This book should be read by everyone interested in vortex dynamics or fluid dynamics in general."

Awards and honours Saffman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986, His nomination for the Royal Society reads:

Personal life Saffman was survived by his wife (Ruth Arion whom he married in 1954), three children (Mark, Louise, Emma), and eight grandchildren (Timothy, Gregory, Rae, Jenny, Nadine, Aaron, Miriam, Alexandra and Andrey).