Arthur H. Frentrop, 77, nuclear physicist, artist

Arthur H. Frentrop of 123 Limekiln Road, a nuclear physicist whose inventions have been used for years to discover oil, died on Tuesday, July 9, at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was 77 years old and had lived in Ridgefield since 1953.
While his career was in science, Mr. Frentrop was also an artist and craftsman who had studied painting in Paris and had exhibited his work widely after his retirement.
Mr. Frentrop was born in St. Louis, Mo., on Nov. 9, 1924, the son of C. Arthur and Adele Flachmeier Frentrop. After studying mechanical engineering at the Missouri School of Mines, he joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. His Rainbow Division later liberated the prisoners of Dachau, the infamous concentration camp.
After the war, he was stationed in Austria, which was divided into three zones, among the allied armies. While in Salzburg, in the American Zone, he met his wife, Erika Weihs, a medical student from Graz in the Russian Zone, who was working with wounded soldiers nearby. A year later, he was discharged in Vienna, and took a civilian job with the American occupation forces, in Intelligence, mapping the elaborate sewers of Vienna.
Arthur and Erika were married in Paris in 1946. While there, he studied fine arts at the Academie Julien where Mrs. Frentrop was also a student.
In 1947, the newlyweds were running out of money and decided to move to the United States. Mr. Frentrop studied physics for the next four years at Washington University in St. Louis and went to Los Alamos, N.M., in 1951, to work with the team that designed the accelerator for the hydrogen bomb at the UCLA Laboratory for Nuclear Research.
While there, Mr. Frentrop became active in efforts to promote world peace. Among the community of scientists at Los Alamos, he led a chapter of the United World Federalists, which supported the United Nations and tried to influence political leaders to support peace.
“He was a fabulous American,” Erika Frentrop said. “He had John Adams’ values — the values of our forefathers. He believed in a pure and a just country.”
In 1953 he was hired as a nuclear physicist by Schlumberger’s research laboratory in Ridgefield, to develop a miniature accelerator, which he called The Minitron. Schlumberger still uses the device around the world to search for underground oil. Seven of his inventions were patented by Schlumberger.
He retired after 28 years with the company.
Mr. Frentrop was actively involved in the town of Ridgefield, serving as a president of the PTA in the 1950s, and as a member of the building committee of what is now East Ridge Middle School in the 1960s.
In the early 1970s, the Frentrops operated a children’s camp, Camp Osprey, on Little Cranberry Island off Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine. They later bought and restored a 150-year-old Victorian home on the island and continued to summer there until 1987.
In retirement, Mr. Frentrop devoted much of his time to the arts, which had been a lifelong interest. His finely turned Shaker furniture had an appreciative audience and his wood sculpture and papier-mâché masks were exhibited extensively, including at the Ridgefield Guild of Artists and at area galleries.
He also loved music, especially jazz, and enjoyed singing. Mrs. Frentrop recalled their life in Paris in 1946. “Those were the ‘Stardust’ days — swing, jitterbug, Glenn Miller — and we danced to those tunes. And he sang with his incomparable bass voice the jazz songs he had learned as a teenager when he soaked up the atmosphere at The Cherry Blossom Lunchroom in East St. Louis and its all-night jam sessions.”
Besides his wife, Mr. Frentrop is survived by three daughters, Renee Santhouse of Wilton, Michele Frentrop of Philadelphia and Andrea Davies of Ridgefield; and by three grandchildren: Aaron, Lloyd and Roy Davies.
A memorial celebration for family and friends will be held at a later date.
Contributions to his memory may be made to Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, 129 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, CT 06501, or to the Williams Syndrome Association, Box 297, Clawson, MI 48017-0297.