The birth and adolescence of MHD turbulence

Abstract

This essay provides a personal account of the development of the subject of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence from its birth in 1950 to its "coming-of-age" in 1971, following the development of mean-field electrodynamics, a major breakthrough of the 1960s. The discussion covers the early ideas based on the analogy with vorticity, the passive vector problem, the suppression of turbulence by an applied magnetic field, and aspects of the turbulent dynamo problem. © 2007 Springer.