AbstractA study, both analytical and experimental, has been made on the natural convection induced by an isothermal vertical plate immersed in a large volume of water at a temperature which was close to its freezing point. A particular attention has been paid to the effects resulting from the non‐linearity existing between the density of water and its temperature. when the latter was close to 4°C. The plate temperature (Tw) was in the range from 8.0°C to 27.2°C. while the water temperature (Ti) varied between 0°C and 22.2°C. The Prandtl numbers for the flow were in the range from 6.4 to 13.7. An excellent agreement between the theoretical solution and the experimental data has been ob