An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

A condition for the onset of → instability in multilayer fluids which compares the balance between the restoring force of → buoyancy and the destabilizing effect of the → shear.

Etymology (EN): Named after the British meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953), who first arrived in 1920 to the dimensionless ratio now called → Richardson number. The first formal proof of the criterion, however, came four decades later for → incompressible flows (Miles, J. W. 1961, J. Fluid Mech., 10, 496; Howard, L. N., 1961, J. Fluid Mech., 10, 509).
Its extension to → compressible flows was demonstrated subsequently (Chimonas 1970, J. Fluid Mech., 43, 833); → criterion.