With encouragement from Professor John McHenry, then head of the physics department at UCC, he went to study at University College Dublin (UCD), and in 1944 completed his MSc there, with a thesis on "Problems on Atmospheric Electricity" done under the direction of P. J. Nolan.
The visiting programme gave him the opportunity to learn from many of the leading physicists of the day including Schrödinger, Dirac, Born and Heitler.
In October 1945 he arrived at the University of Chicago, at that time a world centre of nuclear physics where he had the opportunity to learn from Fermi, Teller and others.
In 1950 he accepted a position as assistant professor in the physics department at Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his young family settled.
At UCC in the 1950s and 1960s, Frank turned his attention to expanding and enhancing the physics teaching programme there, especially at the undergraduate level.