Frank graduated in medicine at Sheffield University, where he was top of his year with first class honours. He was awarded a number of medals and prizes, including the John Hall Gold Medal in Pathology, the Welcome Memorial Prize for original undergraduate work on the immune reaction to viruses and the Walter S. Kay Gold Medal in Mental Diseases. For two decades he was a consultant physician at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, which is affiliated to Sheffield University Medical School, where he had an interest in gastroenterology and nutrition. Together with Professor Nick Read, he helped set up the Nutrition Institute. In 1990 he entered a new phase of his career when he became a best-selling writer and pioneering evolutionary biologist.

WRITING CAREER

Frank's first non-fiction title, an anti-heart attack book co-written with Reg Saynor, The Eskimo Diet, was an instant best-seller in the UK, selling 10,000 in the first hour of trading. Extolling the beneficial role of fish oil in preventing heart attacks, this message was deemed controversial at the time but it became official UK government policy two years later. It subsequently changed medical advice and dietary habits in the UK.

His next non-fiction, Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told, (in the US published as The Forgotten Plague), told the human story of the discovery of the cure and explained why a new global epidemic of tuberculosis was once again threatening developed and developing countries. The book was a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK. World In Action and Horizon programs were based on it on the same day, being viewed by half the UK viewing population. In the United States it took the cover and two additional pages in the New York Times Book Review in addition to front-page reviews in other leading papers, such as The Washington Post. Frank helped the combined US Thoracic Society and Lung Association to launch a fightback against the disease then prevalent in America. His book was subsequently judged a New York Times NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR. This book also took the lead review in the Daily Telegraph in the UK and entered the UK non-fiction hardcover best-seller list. Two one-day plays were based on it, in Boston and Washington DC, involved the late distinguished actor, Jason Robards.

In 1996, his non-fiction title, Virus X, explaining where viruses such as HIV-1 come from, received outstanding reviews in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and took the front page of The Washington Post's Bookworld. A full hour program on CBS television in the States was based on it and it has featured in a series of interviews on Radio 3 and 4 and the BBC Open University. In the UK, it took the lead review in the Daily Telegraph and was the subject of a feature in The Sunday Times colour supplement. The book got to no 5 in the Amazon com bestseller list, selling 13,700 hardcover copies in the first three weeks. Frank's proposal that plague viruses could sometimes change the evolution of their hosts was regarded with scepticism. But time has once again proved him right and these concepts are now being embraced in scientific circles and universities throughout the world. It was in this book he first coined the concept of HIV-1 as an "aggressive symbiont”. The new evolutionary concepts first proposed in Virus were taken further in his next book, Darwin's Blind Spot.
Darwin's Blind Spot, published in 2004, excited considerable interest in the media and scientific circles. It was the “Amazon Featured Book” recommended by the world-famous business investment guru, Charlie Munger at the 2003 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. It led to Frank being elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and the publication a series of iconoclastic papers on evolutionary biology in leading biological and medical journals.

Frank is a popular lecturer, whether delivering key-note presentations to international scientific meetings or in the interaction between science and the public.