Here's a list of some Physics professors working in the areas of turbulence / hydrodynamics / fluid dynamics in two top universities in the US and two in the UK:
Dr. Miklos Porkolab and Dr. Mark Vogelsberger (MIT)
Dr. Edgar Knobloch and Dr. Joel Fajans (UC Berkeley)
Dr. Nikos Nikiforakis (University of Cambridge)
Dr. Peter Read and Dr. Andrew Wells (University of Oxford).
Go back a bit in history: Werner Heisenberg's PhD thesis was titled "On the Stability and Turbulence of Liquid Currents".
Dr. Richard Feynman guided a Physics PhD student who wanted to study how waves form in oceans and also worked on turbulence theory himself.
Yet we see a proliferation of physics departments today that do not take these subjects seriously! I've even met Physicists who say things like "Well, fluid mechanics, hydrodynamic stability, turbulence, etc. are not really physics subjects."
This isn't just laughable - its worse: this is academic shortsightedness of ghastly proportions :)! Liquids and Gases are two of the four phases of physical matter, thus making fluids half the universe we live in :). Include magnetohydrodynamics and plasmas (the fourth state of matter) enter the picture too :). Without a complete understanding of the stability (linear as well as nonlinear) and fully turbulent states of fluid flows, there is simply no possibility of understanding even our own atmosphere, leave alone the evolution and movement of galaxies, planet interiors, the sun and other stars, etc.
We need to get academically rigorous and start keeping things real again! We are too "buzzy" today, too obsessed with buzzwords and fashion!
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