In the United States, Frank attended Swarthmore College (which had been founded as a Quaker institution), gaining an economics degree in 1950.
[1] In 1958 he received a Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Chicago, with a dissertation entitled Growth and Productivity in Ukrainian Agriculture from 1928 to 1955.
His most notable work during this time was his stint as Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of Chile, where he was involved in reforms under the socialist government of Salvador Allende.
After Allende's government was toppled by a coup d'état in 1973, Frank fled to Europe, where he occupied a series of university positions.
During his career, Frank taught and did research in departments of anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, political science, and sociology.
He gave countless lectures and seminars at dozens of universities and other institutions all around the world in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch.
In his later career he produced works such as ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age and, with Barry Gills, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand.
Frank's theories center on the idea that a nation's economic strength, largely determined by historical circumstances—especially geography—dictates its global power.