The unsteady flow of an incompressible viscous non-Newtonian fluid above an infinite rotating disk is studied with heat transfer. The effect of the non-Newtonian fluid characteristics on the velocity and temperature distributions as well as the heat transfer is considered. Numerical solutions for the non-linear partial differential equations which govern the hydrodynamics and energy transfer are obtained. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.