Home Page- Geoff Frohnsdorff

Mailing Address

Dr. Geoffrey Frohnsdorff
Guest Researcher
Materials and Construction ResearchDivision
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
Building 226 Room B-350
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD  20899   USA
(301) 975-6706
FAX: (301) 990-6891

E-mail: geoffrey.frohnsdorff@nist.gov

Dr. Frohnsdorff joined the NIST in 1973. As Chief of the Building Materials Division for many years, he was responsible for research on the durability and other aspects of the performance of building materials, and for the operation of the Construction Materials Reference Laboratories sponsored by the American Society for Testing and Materials and the American Association of State Highways and Transportation Officials. He was awarded the Silver Medal of the Department of Commerce in 1982 for the "development of a building materials program that has improved standards, test methods, and cement and concrete technology worldwide."

Before joining NIST, Dr. Frohnsdorff was a Group Leader in the Gillette Research Institute (1970-73) and Manager of Research and Development for the American Cement Corporation (1965-70). His previous research activities were in the surface chemistry of silicates; in the chemistry of cements, particularly simulation of the reactions of cements with water; in the photodegradation of cellulose; and in the flammability of textiles.

Dr. Frohnsdorff is a member of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS), the American Concrete Institute (ACI), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and RILEM (the International Union of Testing and Research Laboratories for Materials and Structures). He served on the Board of Trustees of the ACerS in 1971-72, and he chaired the Cements Division in 1984-85; he was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1975. In ACI, Dr. Frohnsdorff chaired the Committee on Hydraulic Cements (1983-88), chairs ACI 126 on Concrete Materials Property Database, and is Vice Chairman of the Concrete Research Council; he was elected a Fellow of ACI in 1987, and received ACI's Delmar L. Bloem Award in 1988. In ASTM, he chaired Committee C-1 on Cements and the Task Group on Design Life of Buildings in Subcommittee E06.22 on Durability Performance of Building Constructions; he received the Award of Merit and Fellowship of ASTM in 1993. In RILEM, he served on the Technical Advisory Group (1978-83) and was its Chairman in 1982-83. He also served as secretary of the RILEM Committee on Mathematical Modelling of Cement Hydration (1983-88), and was a member of the Scientific Committee for the RILEM 40th Anniversary Congress, "From Materials Science to Materials Engineering," held in 1987.

In other activities, Dr. Frohnsdorff chairs Working Group 9 on Design Life of Buildings in ISO Technical Committee 59 on Building Construction; he chaired the ACerS/NIST Conference on Advances in Cementitious Materials (1990), Engineering Foundation Conference on Building Materials (1978), Cement Manufacture and Use (1985), and the 2nd International Conference on Durability of Building Materials and Components (1981). He also chaired the Transportation Research Board Committee on Basic Research Pertaining to Cement and Concrete from 1983-86. In 1991, he chaired the session on New and Improved Materials and Composites at the National Civil Engineering Research Needs Forum.