One of the great twentieth-century achievements in the mechanics of fluids was the full elucidation of the physics of shock waves and the later comprehensive development of understanding of how shock waves propagate (i) through otherwise undisturbed fluid and (ii) in interaction either with solid bodies or with independently generated fluid flows. The interaction problems (ii) were soon found to raise some very special difficulties (beginning with the common formation of "Mach stems" in shock-wave reflection) yet they also turned out to possess enormous scientific interest as well as being...