[2] Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio Frank received his Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Columbia University in 1912.
[3] At Columbia Frank met the economist Wesley C. Mitchell, who guided the National Bureau of Economic Research, and his wife Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who founded Bank Street College of Education as the Bureau of Educational Experiments.
From 1936 to 1942 he was vice-president of the Josiah Macy Foundation, Frank was among the attendees of the first Macy meeting in 1942 with other scientists such as the anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, the neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch, the physician and physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth and the psychoanalyst Lawrence Kubie.
[5] Beside his administrative career he was visiting professor and lecturer at several institutions, member of many learned societies and organizations, and wrote a series of books of educational and social matters.
[3] In some of these writings, Frank suggested that the American focus on individualism should be re-balanced in favor of more group responsibility.