On March 15, 1901, Henri B enard defended his thesis entitled "Les Tourbillons cellulaires dans une nappe liquide propageant de la chaleur par convection en 1 r egime permanent" at the University of Paris, Sorbonne. The results contained in this thesis have been at the origin of recent intensive research activities on c- lular structures observed in many physicochemical systems far from equilibrium: instabilities, spatio-temporal patterns, chaos, and turbulence. The French Physical Society organized a scienti?c meeting to commemorate the centenary of B enard's thesis, at the Ecole Sup erieure...

This second edition of Physical Hydrodynamics is a deeply enriched version of a classical textbook on fluid dynamics. It retains the same pedagogical spirit, based on the authors' experience of teaching university students in the physical sciences, and emphasizes an experimental (inductive) approach rather than the more formal approach found in many textbooks in the field. A new edition was necessary as contact between the mechanics and physics approaches and their communities has increased continuously over the last few decades. Today the field is more widely open to other experimental...