Professor Burgers developed an equation to describe turbulence. It proved to be a valuable modelequation to describe non-linear phenomena. It’s still being used today, with a much wider field of application ranging from neural networks to tumour growth, heat flow and the distribution of stars over the galaxy.

After important work with hot-wire measurements in turbulent boundary layers, Burgers moved to, among other things, model problems and the essence of turbulence. He proposed the Burgers equation as a more convenient, and analytically solvable, alternative to the Navier-Stokes equations.

Burgers was appointed as professor at the TU Delft in 1918. Work on his equation already started in 1940. In 1950 the equation was first published in its currently best known form.