Dr. L. W. Nijboer was born July 27, 1901 in Edam, Holland. He has made major contributions to asphalt technology through his work at the Royal Dutch/Shell-Laboratory, Amsterdam, Holland. He has been particularly concerned with the mechanical properties and the design of both road mixes and flexible road structures.
In the former field his work “Plasticity as a Factor in the Designs of Dense Bituminous Road Carpets” was one of the earliest scientific studies of this type. He also has made outstanding contributions in the development and application of non-destructive dynamic testing techniques for flexible road construction, both for evaluation and design purposes.
Dr. Nijboer graduated in 1925 from the Delft Technical University as a civil engineer and received his doctor’s degree from the same institution in 1942. His doctoral thesis was “Investigations on the Resistance of Mixtures of Asphaltic Bitumen and Mineral Aggregate Against Plastic Deformations.”
His work from 1934 to 1946 was as research engineer in bitumen applications research at Koninklijke/Shell-Laboratorium, Amsterdam. From 1946 to 1956 he was head of the section on road and hydraulic application of asphaltic bitumen. He retired from the Shell Company in 1961 and since that date was affiliated with the National Road Research Laboratory.
Elected: 1966
