La mécanique des fluides à la Sorbonne entre les deux guerres

World War I opened the way to a restructuring of research in the field of aviation sciences in France as abroad. Technical advances were made possible under the impulse of a new science: aerodynamics, notably owing to Gustave Eiffel's works. Nevertheless, the experimental approach that most marked this foundational period was replaced, after the Great War, with a much more theoretical approach of aerodynamic phenomena. And it is under the name “fluid mechanics” that both theoretical and experimental approaches were gathered together to constitute, with classical hydrodynamics, the basis of teaching and university research at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. The patronage era that had anchored aeronautical teaching and research to the Faculty of Sciences in Paris was succeeded by an era when the government authorities directly intervened to institutionalize fluid mechanics and orientate it toward applications to aviation. In this article, we will analyse the steps and modalities of the emergence of this science, with the aim to determine how much the scientific policy deployed between the two wars by the public authorities influenced the evolution and the progress of aeronautical techniques, and met the expectations of its promoters.