AbstractAn analytical study is performed to examine the thermal diffusion characteristics of free convection and mass transfer flow in a non‐Newtonian fluid (Walters, 1962: liquid B') past a uniformly accelerated infinite vertical plate in the presence of thermal diffusion. The expression for the velocity field is obtained by the Laplace transform technique. The influence of the Soret number (a thermal diffusion parameter) on the velocity field is extensively discussed with the help of graph