Bob Frank '61 Receives Alumni Academic Award

Dr. Robert Frank '61 was presented with the Brother Mel Anderson, FSC Alumni Award for Excellence in Academics in front of the study body during the Academic Awards Ceremony on January 21, 2010. 

Bob Frank is a member of the second graduating class of La Salle where he was on the Lance Yearbook Staff and was awarded the General Academic Excellence Award, the Bank of America Award for Liberal Arts and gave the Commencement Address for the Class of 1961.

After graduating from Stanford University with a double major in pre-Med and History, Dr. Frank went on to study the history of science at Harvard University. While at Harvard, he was given the opportunity to spend a year studying at Oxford, returning to Harvard in 1969 where he was awarded the doctorate in 1971.

After brief stints teaching at Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Frank was given the unusual opportunity to accept an appointment as Assistant Professor of Medical History in the Department of Neurobiology in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Even more unusual was his promotion from Assistant Professor to full Professor within a year of his appointment to the School of Medicine. By 1986, Dr. Frank was named Chief of the Medical History division, a post he has held for over 20 years.

With over a hundred invited lectures, Dr. Frank has been a frequent and popular speaker at prestigious educational institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, USC, Strasbourg and Berlin.  Between 1973 and 1981, Dr. Frank has served as Assistant or Associate Editor of the Journal of the History of Biology.

Dr. Frank is a prolific author, having appeared in journals and edited books such as the History of Science, Studies in Nineteenth-Century Physiology and Medicine, Mind and Body in the Enlightenment, A History of the University of Oxford, The Restoration Mind and the Journal of the History of Medicine. In addition, he has authored or co-authored two books: English Scientific Virtuosi in the 16th and 17th Centuries and Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A Study of Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction which was awarded the William Henry Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine in May 1983, for "particular contributions of outstanding scholarly merit in the field of medical history."