Philip Gerald Drazin (25 May 1934 – 10 January 2002) was a British mathematician and a leading international expert influid dynamics.

Drazin was born in East London to Isaac Drazin, who was of Russian-Jewish origin and ran a shop inHampstead, and Leah Wexler. Drazin went to boarding school atSt Christopher School,Letchworth during the Blitz. His older brotherMichael is also a mathematician.^[1]

Drazin completed his PhD at theUniversity of Cambridge underG. I. Taylor in 1958. He was awarded theSmith's Prize in 1957. After leaving Cambridge, he spent two years atMIT before moving to theUniversity of Bristol, where he stayed and became a Professor until retiring in 1999. After retiring, he lectured at theUniversity of Oxford and theUniversity of Bath until his death in 2002.

Drazin worked onhydrodynamic stability and the transition toturbulence. His 1974 paperOn a model of instability of a slowly-varying flow introduced the concept of aglobal mode solution to a system ofpartial differential equations such as theNavier-Stokes equations. He also worked onsolitons.

In 1998 he was awarded theSymons Gold Medal of theRoyal Meteorological Society.^[2]

Drazin died at his home inBristol in 2002.^[1]

• Philip Gerald Drazin at theMathematics Genealogy Project
• Drazin's 1974 paper
• Drazin's obituary byChristopher Budd