Frank Ambrose Beach, Jr. (April 13, 1911 – June 15, 1988) was an American ethologist, best known as co-author of the 1951 book Patterns of Sexual Behavior.
Beach was a poor student, receiving D's and F's at Emporia, so he was sent to Antioch College for his sophomore year to regain his focus.
Beach was unable to find a job in teaching, so he accepted a fellowship in clinical psychology at Emporia to earn his master's degree.
[2] After completing his master's degree, he moved to the University of Chicago, to accept a fellowship from psychologist Harvey Carr, who had trained his former mentor, James B. Stroud.
[2] Financial difficulties forced Beach to leave Chicago, and took a high school teaching position in Yates Center, Kansas,[2] where he married his first wife.
[2] Beach returned to the University of Chicago in 1935, and completed, under the supervision of Harvey Carr, a PhD thesis on the role the neocortex on innate maternal behavior in rats.
[2][3] In 1936, Beach accepted a one-year position at Karl Lashley's Cambridge laboratory, where he continued his studies of animal sexual behavior.
Beach, along with anthropologist Clellan S. Ford, co-authored the book Patterns of Sexual Behavior (1951), considered a "classic" of its field.
[2][3] In the days prior to his death, Beach continued his work from a hospital bed, reading scientific literature and giving advice about a paper on reproductive behavior to be presented at an Omaha conference on June 12, 1988.
He studied the effects of endocrines on behaviors through methods such as castration, isolation, brain legions, and hormone manipulation.
Beach is remembered as a serious scholar and researcher, who believed that "increasing knowledge, in and of itself, is a justifiable way to spend your life.
I do not want to cross the finish line of this race – not ever – but I do hope I will be able to keep running at my own pace until I drop out still moving in full stride.
[1] Donald Dewsbery, writing for the National Academy of Sciences, called Beach "arguably the premier psychobiologist of his generation, influencing the development of psychobiology in numerous, diverse ways.