Thinking Fluid Dynamics with Dolphins

This is the English edition of a Japanese book entitled “Learning Fluid Dynamics from Dolphins”. The title derives from the fact that “dolphins swim too fast to be explained scientifically”. The first person to clearly describe this phenomenon was the English biologist Sir James Gray and this mystery is known among physicists and specialists in marine engineering as “Gray’s paradox” or simply as the “mystery of dolphins”. In addition to dolphins, tuna, marlin and some other fish are also famous for swimming at extraordinarily high speeds. Treating both dolphins and fish together in the same title is difficult because both animals have very different taxonomy – dolphins belonging to oceanic mammals, and tuna and marlin belonging to teleostei fish. This book uses dolphins as symbolic animals that perform high-speed swimming. The book is mainly for readers who are interested in technology and science and who hope to specialize in technological occupations. It introduces the developing history of fluid dynamics and then outlines the research history and the recognition of Gray’s paradox. Finally, Minoru Nagai’s research, through approximately three decades, is reviewed.