The present book contains papers that have been selected from contributions to the First International Symposium on Turbulent Shear Flows which was held from the 18th to 20th April 1977 at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. Attend­ ees from close to 20 countries presented over 100 contributions at this meeting in which many aspects of the current activities in turbulence research were covered. Five topics received particular attention at the Symposium: Free Flows Wall Flows Recirculating Flows Developments in Reynolds Stress Closures New Directions in Modeling This is also reflected in the five chapters of this book with contributions from research workers from different countries. Each chapter covers the most valuable contributions of the conference to the particular chapter topic. Of course, there were many additional good con­ tributions to each subject at the meeting but the limitation imposed on the length of this volume required that a selection be made. The realization of the First International Symposium on Turbulent Shear Flows was p- sible by the general support of: U. S. Army Research Office U. S. Navy Research Office Continuing Education Center of The Pennsylvania State University The conference organization was carried out by the organizing committee consisting of: F. Durst, Universitat Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Fed. Rep. of Germany V. W. Goldschmidt, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind. , USA B. E. Launder, University of California, Davis, Calif. , USA F. W. Schmidt, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Penna.