本书介绍了真实流体物理学的基础理论，使学生能了解从过去半个多世纪研究中获得的常见的流系统和流现象。本书的重点在于流体动力学的物理规律和普遍性，此外还特别关注流系统的各种概念模型和分析模型与观察资料之间的关联。

本书适合作为应用数学和工程专业本科生及研究生的教材。本书被多所著名大学采用为教材，如英国剑桥大学、美国加州大学洛杉矶分校等。

George Keith Batchelor (8 March 1920 – 30 March 2000) was an Australian applied mathematician and fluid dynamicist. He was for many years the Professor of Applied Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and was founding head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). In 1956 he founded the influential Journal of Fluid Mechanics which he edited for some forty years.

As an applied mathematician (and for some years at Cambridge a co-worker with Sir Geoffrey Taylor in the field of turbulent flow), he was a keen advocate of the need for physical understanding and sound experimental basis.

His An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics (CUP, 1967) is still considered a classic of the subject, and has been re-issued in the Cambridge Mathematical Library series, following strong current demand[1]. Unusual for an 'elementary' textbook of that era, it presented a treatment in which the properties of a real viscous fluid were fully emphasised.