FRENKIEL

POLAND (see also List of Individuals)

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19.9.1910 Warszawa/PL - 9.7.1986 Rockwell MD/USA

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François Naftali Frenkiel graduated as a mechanical engineer from Gent University, Belgium and made additional studies in aeronautical engineering at Lille University, France, where he collaborated with Joseph Kampé de Fériet (1893-1982) and received his PhD degree. In 1943 he was imprisoned by the Nazis for two years at Buchenwald concentration Camp. He moved in 1947 to the USA to work from 1948 to 1950 at the US Naval Ordnance Laboratory. He then headed the group of theoretical and applied mechanics in the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. In 1960, he moved to the US Naval Ship Research and Development Center in Carderock MD as a senior scientist in the computational mathematics department, where he remained until retirement in 1981. He served a term as president of the Washington Philosophical Society and another term at the Washington Academy of Sciences.

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Frenkiel's research was in mathematical problems in fluid dynamics. During his stay in Lille, he studied sand dune formation as a representation of atmospheric turbulence near the ground. An influential work was later the analysis of turbulent diffusion of contaminants in the atmosphere of the Los Angeles Basin. Frenkiel generated tests of mathematical and statistical formulations of the turbulent structure in fluids and analyzed measurements made by others in wind tunnels, the atmosphere and the ocean. He pioneered the application of high-speed digital computers to the measurement of turbulence and published extensively on the properties of turbulence and its measurement. In 1958, the first volume of the journal Physics in Fluids appeared, establishing a high standard for the publication of work in fluid dynamics and plasma research, with Frenkiel as its editor until 1981. Because of his exemplary service to the division of fluid dynamics and the high level of integrity and quality he brought to the Physics in Fluids, Frenkiel came to be called "Mr. Fluid Dynamics".

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_{Anonymous (1952). François N. Frenkiel. Aeronautical Engineering Review 11(1): 41. P}

_{Emrich, R.J., Klebanoff, P.S., Elsasser, W.M., Polachek, H. (1987). Frenkiel. Physics Today}

_{40(2): 123-124. P}

_{Frenkiel, F.N. (1948). On the kinematics of turbulence. Journal Aeronautical Sciences 15(1): 57-64.}

_{Frenkiel, F.N. (1952). On the statistical theory of turbulent diffusion. Proc. National Academy of Sciences 38: 509-515.}