AbstractAn investigation is made of the heat transfer by combined free and forced convection from an isothermal circular cylinder in an unsteady stream of viscous incompressible fluid. Numerical solutions of unsteady boundary layer equations are sought by employing the local non‐similarity solution method (see Ref. [7]), together with difference‐differential method. In particular, the development of the boundary layer flow, the skin friction and heat transfer coefficients at the front stagnation point are examined. The numerical solution is compared with previous numerical work on the prob