2006 Honorary Members
Carl Bimel
Carl Bimel retired in 2004 after working as a business owner and consultant for approximately 45 years.
After serving in WWII for 3-1/2 years, Bimel left his family's business and eventually became the owner of a small company (four men and a secretary) committed to the promotion and sale of one product - a premixed, non-metallic aggregate concrete floor hardener called MAXIMENT.
Due to limited personnel and capital, the company focused on selected industries who were building new facilities and on the architects/engineers who worked with them, as well as on general contractors who were interested and capable of doing their own concrete work.
After Master Builders acquired MAXIMENT, he did some consulting work for them, as well as Iron Mountain Trap Rock, and also worked on legal depositions for concrete contractors. In the past 20 years, Bimel has consulted for a concrete finishing contractor who was one of his first customers-Baker Concrete Construction, Inc. He feels fortunate to have gotten to know many wonderful people over the years.
An ACI Fellow since 1994, he is a member and Past Chair (1992-1998) of ACI Committee 302, Construction of Concrete Floors, and is a member of ACI Committees 223, Shrinkage-Compensating Concrete, and 360, Design of Slabs on Ground. Bimel devoted considerable time to working on a number of ACI technical committees and several very revealing in-field evaluation tests in the finishing of concrete.
Bimel graduated from Purdue University in 1942. He and his "young wife" have been together for 60 years.
P. Kumar Mehta
P. Kumar Mehta is Professor Emeritus in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. He retired in 1993 after 30 years of teaching and research in concrete technology.
Mehta is Past Chair of the ACI Commemorative Lectures Series Committee and is a member of the ACI Board Advisory Committee on Sustainable Development and ACI Committee 232, Fly Ash and Natural Pozzolans in Concrete. He received the ACI Wason Medal for Materials Research in 1988, the ACI Construction Practice Award in 1999, an ACI/CANMET award for outstanding contributions to knowledge and understanding of physical-chemical factors influencing the performance of concrete in marine environments, and an ACI/CANMET award for research contributions to supplementary cementing materials. At the ACI Fall 2001 Convention, he delivered the Lewis H. Tuthill Commemorative Lecture. Mehta was also awarded the Berkeley Citation by the University of California at Berkeley upon his retirement, the highest campus honor for his contributions to his field and to the university.
He holds nine patents in the area of cement and concrete technology, and is the author or coauthor of nearly 250 scientific papers and four books including a popular university text: CONCRETE-Microstructure, Properties, and Materials. The book has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portugese, and Persian. An updated edition of this book (coauthor P.J.M. Monteiro), containing several topics of interest in modern concrete technology, was recently published.
Mehta received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delhi, India; his master's degree in ceramic engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC; and his doctorate degree in material science and engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ramnath Narayan Swamy
Ramnath Narayan Swamy is Professor Emeritus, Department of Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Sheffield, England. He has been involved in teaching, research, design, and consultancy for about 45 years.
An ACI member, he has served on several ACI committees, and is currently a member of ACI Committee 549, Thin Reinforced Cementitious Products and Ferrocement. He has earned many awards, including the ACI Design Practice Award in 2005, the ACI Concrete Research Council's Robert E. Philleo Award, the ICE (UK) George Stephenson Gold Medal, and the Construction Institute/ASCE Best Paper Award for developing a new design criterion for plate bonding. In March 1992, Swamy organized a technical session at the ACI Convention in Washington, DC, that resulted in the publication of ACI SP-165, Repair and Strengthening of Concrete Members with Adhesive Bonded Plates.
His research interests include a variety of topics concerned with concrete materials and concrete structures and their interactive performance in real environments, design, and construction. The focus of his research/lecture activities has been technology transfer and holistic design for durability, sustainability, and the environment.
He has guided and trained over 100 doctorate students from all over the world, leading to the publication of over 200 refereed papers. In addition, Swamy has edited a series of books on concrete technology and design and many international conference proceedings. He is the Founding Editor of the journal Cement and Concrete Composites, of which he has been Editor for 27 years. He has been the Chairperson of the Yorkshire (UK) Chapters of the Concrete Society, Institution of Civil Engineers, and Institution of Structural Engineers. As Secretary and then Chairperson, he was closely associated with the work of the RILEM (Paris) Committee on fiber concrete for about two decades.
Richard N. White
Richard N. White retired from Cornell University in 1999, where he was named the James A. Friend Professor of Engineering in 1987.
An ACI member since 1957, White was elected ACI Vice-President in 1995, served as ACI President from 1997-1998, and was Chair of the Standards Board from 2002 to 2005. He is a founding member and Past Chair of ACI Committee 444, Experimental Analysis for Concrete Structures, and is a member of ACI Committees, 335, Composite and Hybrid Structures; E 602, Electronic Delivery Oversight; and International Membership. He is also a member and Past Chair of the ACI Technical Activities Committee Technology Transfer Committee (TTTC) and was a member of the Technical Activities Committee (TAC) for 8 years and served as Chair from 1991 to 1994. He is a past member of several ACI committees including 349, Concrete Nuclear Structures, and 369, Seismic Repair and Rehabilitation, and Joint ACI-ASME Committee, 359, Concrete Components for Nuclear Reactors. White received the ACI Joe W. Kelly Award in 1992 and was the co-recipient of the ACI Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper and the ACI Structural Research Award in 1993 and 1994, respectively.
He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering in 1992 and to Honorary Membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2002. He received the ASCE Collingwood Prize in 1962.
White received three civil engineering degrees, including his PhD in 1961, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI. In 1994, he received the University of Wisconsin Distinguished Service Citation.