François Frenkiel, received his undergraduate education in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his Doctor of Philosophy in physics from the University of Lille in France where he studied under the direction of Kampé de Fériet.
He was the editor of Physics of Fluids from its establishment until 1981. He came to the States in 1947 and was associated successively with Cornell University, the United States. Naval Ordnance Laboratory, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and, from 1960 until his retirement, with the David West. Taylor Naval Ship Research and Development Center. He published extensively in the field of turbulent flows and pioneered the application of high-speed digital computing methods to the measurement of turbulence and the mathematical modeling of urban pollution.
He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Frenkiel retired in 1981 and died on 9 July 1986, in Washington, District of Columbia The American Physical Society has named an award in his honor.
In addition to being the founder and longtime editor of Physics of Fluids, he served on a large number of national and international committees, e.g., to name but a few, the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), the United States. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society of which he was the chairman and secretary on numerous occasions.
