[2] Frenk is particularly notable for his work around galaxy formation, including his use of complex computer simulations to test theories on the origins and evolution of the universe, thus helping to resolve disputes among theoretical models.

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004, Frenk has received numerous awards and is regularly tipped as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Physics.

[3] His father was a German Jewish doctor who emigrated from Germany at the age of 7, fleeing persecution in the lead up to World War II, while his mother was a Mexican–Spanish pianist.

[5] Frenk studied engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but later changed to Theoretical Physics, earning his undergraduate degree in 1976.

[5] That year he secured a British Council Fellowship and enrolled at the University of Cambridge to read Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, which he completed in 1977.

[3] At Berkeley, Davis needed Frenk, with his background in theoretical physics, to assist in interpreting his research — he had mapped 2,200 galaxies while at Harvard.

[10] Once their research started to draw important results – despite the limited computing power available to them – Davis, White, Efstathiou, and Frenk came to be known as the 'Gang of Four' for the attention their arguments attracted.

[5] The research produced by the Gang of Four confirmed the validity of the "cold dark matter theory" for the formation of galaxies and other cosmic structures.

[5][b] Research efforts at Durham were boosted by the 1994 announcement of the High Performance Computing Initiative, which promised more resources from the government in future.

[5][c] Crucially, this gave Frenk and his team access to the supercomputing centre of the Max Planck Society in Garching, regarded as among the best facilities in the world.

[10] In 1996 and 1997, Frenk, White, and lead author Julio Navarro of the University of Arizona, published some remarkable results based on their analysis of halos from cold dark matter simulations.

[13][14] In 2005, as a member of the Virgo Consortium, Frenk was part of a team that produced the Millennium Run, which was, at the time, the largest and most realistic cosmological N-body simulation ever.

[5] In a later interview, Frenk summarised his cosmological simulation work as "cosmic cookery" because it depended on selecting just the right "ingredients", putting it into a computer, and letting it "cook".

[17] Frenk, along with Julio Navarro and Simon White, was tipped as a potential winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics; though victory at a later date was considered a greater possibility given the award the previous year (to a team led by Princeton astrophysicist Jim Peebles) had been for work that was also within the realm of space science.

[11] Frenk has an interest in architecture, which was inspired by his experience studying at the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

[22] He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cosmology and the public dissemination of basic science.

[25][26][3][27][28][29] 2023 Honorary Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, 2023 Honorary Fellow of Cambridge Philosophical Society, 2021 Rumford Medal, Royal Society, 2020 Paul Dirac medal and prize, Institute of Physics, 2020 Clarivate Web of Science Citation Laurate (2020), 2019 Honorary Doctor of Science, Sussex University, 2017 Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 2017 Max Born Prize German Physical Society (DPG), 2017 Elected member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, 2014 Oort Professorship, Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands, 2014 Gold medal, Royal Astronomical Society, 2013 Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, 2013 Lansdowne Visitor, UVic, Canada, 2013 The Biermann Lectures, Max Planck Society, 2011 The Gruber Cosmolgy Prize ($500,000, jointly w. M. Davis, G. Efstathiou, S. White), 2010 Hoyle Medal and Prize, Institute of Physics, 2010 George Darwin prize, Royal Astronomical Society, 2007 Daniel Chalonge medal, Observatoire de Paris, 2006 Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award, 2006 The Withrow lecture, Royal Astronomical Society, 2004 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 2004 Ranked 2th most cited author in Space Sciences in the world in the past 10 years, 2002 Ranked 5th most cited physical scientist in UK since 1980, 2000-2001 Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 2000 Ranked 16th most cited physical scientist in the UK during the 1990s, 1996-1999 PPARC Senior Fellowship, 1992-1993 Sir Derman Christopherson Fellowship, University of Durham, 1991-1992 Nuffield Foundation Science Research Fellowship, 1985 SERC Advanced Fellowship (declined), 1976-1979 British Council Fellowship, 1976 Gabino Barreda medal for first place in Theor.

[4] 1986 Australian Television Beyond 2000: the big questions, 1988 BBC Radio 3 The twilight of the gravitino, 1988 Sveriges Riksradio AB, Stockholm The dark side of the Universe, 1990 Japan Broadcasting Corp.