Frank

Leslie, Frank, 1821-80, American engraver and publisher, b. England. He learned his trade on the Illustrated London News, but in 1848 immigrated to New York City, where in 1855 he began publishing Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, one of the first influential newsweeklies. His real name, Henry Carter, was discarded when his pseudonym, Frank Leslie, became widely known. He inaugurated a method for speedily illustrating current events by dividing his drawings into blocks that could be distributed among a number of engravers and afterward reassembled. His profits and fame were greatest when, during the Civil War, his artists on the battlefields sent back illustrations. They now have great historical value. He went bankrupt in 1877. His second wife, Miriam Florence (Folline) Leslie, continued his business interests after his death.

Lateur, Frank: see Streuvels, Stijn.

O'Connor, Frank, 1903-66, Irish short-story writer, whose name originally was Michael O'Donovan. He was a librarian in Dublin and later a director of the Abbey Theatre (1936-39). O'Connor is noted primarily for his short stories—witty, tender, and penetrating studies of Irish life. He also published poetry, critical works, and volumes of Irish history.

O'Hara, Frank 1926-66, American poet, b. Baltimore, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1950), Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor (M.A., 1951). His poetry is spontaneous, vernacular, witty, personal, and very much of its time and place—New York City, 1951-66. Closely associated with many of the painters of his time, O'Hara was a founder of the Poet's Theatre and later the center of the New York School of Poets (consisting of himself, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler). His writings include Collected Poems (1971), Early Writing (1977), Poems Retrieved (1977), and Selected Poems (2008).

Murphy, Frank, 1890-1949, American political figure, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1940-49), b. Harbor Beach, Mich. After serving as a U.S. attorney (1919-20) and as a judge of recorder's court (1923-30), he was elected mayor of Detroit in 1930 and was widely recognized for his relief efforts. He resigned to become governor-general (1933-35) and later (1935-36) U.S. high commissioner in the Philippine Islands. Elected governor of Michigan in 1936, his settlement of the automobile strike (1937) in Flint, Mich., made him a national figure. In Jan., 1939, Murphy, a New Deal Democrat, was appointed U.S. Attorney General and served until his appointment to the Supreme Court. For a short time in 1942 he left the bench to serve as an army officer. Justice Murphy's opinions reflected his ardent liberalism. In his dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), he stated that the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans was unconstitutional.

Harris, Frank, 1856-1931, British-American author, b. Galway, Ireland. He studied at the Univ. of Kansas, became a U.S. citizen, and returning to England, edited successively a number of periodicals. A controversial figure in both his private life and his writings, he is primarily known for his scandalously frank and highly unreliable autobiography, My Life and Loves (3 vol., 1923-27), which was banned in the United States and England for many years. Much of his other work, such as his first novel, The Bomb (1908), shows a similar leaning toward eroticism. His biographical series Contemporary Portraits (1915-27), portraying such men as Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, and Kipling, many of whom he knew, and his biography of Oscar Wilde (1916) reveal his facility for maliciousness and imaginative speculation. Among his other works are the volume of short stories, Montes the Matador (1900), and the novel Great Days (1913).

Sinatra, Frank (Francis Albert Sinatra), 1915-98, American singer and actor, b. Hoboken, N.J. During the late 1930s and early 40s he sang with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands, causing teenage girls to shriek and swoon over his romantic, seemingly casual renditions of such songs as "I'll Never Smile Again" and "This Love of Mine." During his long career he became one of the most successful pop music figures of the century, widely respected as a "singer's singer" for his richly detailed readings of lyrics and his versatile and nuanced musical style. Sinatra's sophisticated musicianship was evident in his many recordings. He had a long-lived and successful movie career, appearing in 58 films including On the Town (1949), From Here to Eternity (1953, Academy Award), Guys and Dolls (1955), Pal Joey (1957), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and The Detective (1968). He also directed and produced several films. Sinatra retired from show business in 1971 but returned in several concert tours.

Capra, Frank, 1897-1991, American film director, b. Bisaquino, Sicily. One of the preeminent Hollywood directors of the 1930s and 40s, he produced idealistic populist movies that, sometimes amusingly and sometimes sentimentally but nearly always optimistically, celebrate the virtues of the common American. His family emigrated to the United States in 1903 and settled in Los Angeles. Starting in the movies in the early 1920s, he became a feature film director with Harry Langdon comedies, achieved commercial success with Platinum Blonde (1931), and won his first Academy Award with the "screwball" romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934).

Capra's naively decent American heroes triumph over the forces of greed, cynicism, corruption, or self-doubt in such films as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936; Academy Award), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and the richly textured classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Among his movie-making innovations were accelerated pacing, conversational and sometimes overlapping dialogue, and previews that gauged audience reaction. Capra's many other films include Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938; Academy Award), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), State of the Union (1948), A Hole in the Head (1959), and his last, Pocketful of Miracles (1961).

Tannenbaum, Frank, 1893-1969, American historian, b. Austria. He received his Ph.D. from the Brookings School of Economics in 1927. After an early career as a labor leader, journalist, and economic adviser, he became an expert in institutional history and made notable studies of labor, slavery, and the penal system. He is known chiefly, however, as an expert on Latin America. His work in the 1930s as an adviser to the Mexican government led to his book Peace by Revolution: An Interpretation of Mexico (1933). He played a key role in the development of the Farm Security Bill during the New Deal and in the creation of the university seminars at Columbia. He was professor of Latin American history at Columbia from 1935 until his retirement in 1962. His major works include Slave and Citizen (1947), Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread (1950), A Philosophy of Labor (1951), and Ten Keys to Latin America (1962).

Frank, Anne, 1929-45, German diarist, b. Frankfurt as Anneliese Marie Frank. In order to escape Nazi persecution, her family emigrated (1933) to Amsterdam, where her father Otto became a business owner. After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, her family (along with several other Jews) hid for just over two years (1942-44) in a "secret annex" that was part of her father's office and warehouse building. During those years, Anne kept a diary characterized by poignancy, insight, humor, touching naiveté, and sometimes tart observation. The family was betrayed to the Germans in 1944, and at 15 Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Anne's diary was discovered by one of the family's helpers and after the war was given to her father, the only immediate family member to survive the Holocaust. Edited by him, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) became an international bestseller and has been translated into English (1952) and 66 other languages. It was also adapted into a play (1955) and a film (1959). A critical edition was published in 1986, and a complete edition, containing almost a third more material, appeared in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of her death. Anne Frank also wrote stories, fables, and essays, which were published in 1959. The Franks' Amsterdam hiding place is now a museum, there is a foundation established by her father, and institutions devoted to her exist in New York, Berlin, London, and other cities.

Frank, Barney, 1940-, American congressman, b. Bayonne, N.J., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1962; J.D., 1977). A liberal Democrat, he began his political career as chief assistant to Boston Mayor Kevin White (1968-71) and was subsequently (1971-72) assistant to Congressman Michael Harrington. Frank was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1972, serving there until he first won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980. In 1987 Frank publicly acknowledged his homosexuality; three years later his reputation was tarnished after it became known that a male prostitute that Frank had tried to help and hired as a personal aide had used Frank's apartment for prostitution. Frank, who is known for his intelligence, sharp wit, and outspokenness, has chaired the House financial services committee since 2007.

Frank, Bruno, 1887-1945, German novelist and dramatist. His popular works include the historical novels The Days of the King (1924, tr. 1927), Trenck (1926, tr. 1928), and A Man Called Cervantes (1934, tr. 1934) and the play Twelve Thousand (1927, tr. 1928). A Jew, he was exiled (1933) from Germany and came to the United States in 1937.

Frank, Glenn, 1887-1940, American editor and educator, b. Queen City, Mo., grad. Northwestern Univ., 1912. He was assistant to the president of Northwestern Univ. from 1912 to 1916. In 1919, Frank joined the staff of the Century Magazine, becoming editor in 1921. In 1925 he was appointed president of the Univ. of Wisconsin, where he initiated the university's famous Experimental College and instituted changes in the teaching of agriculture. Ousted from his position by Gov. Philip Fox Follette in 1937, Frank became editor of Rural Progress. He was also active in the Republican party and was campaigning for the position of Senator from Wisconsin when he died in an automobile accident. His works include The Politics of Industry (1919), An American Looks at His World (1923), and America's Hour of Decision (1934).

Frank, Ilya Mikhailovich, 1908-90, Soviet physicist, Ph.D. Moscow State Univ., 1935. He was a professor at Moscow State Univ. from 1944 until his death in 1990. Mikhailovich and Igor Y. Tamm won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pavel A. Cherenkov and Igor Tamm for their explanation of the radiation discovered by Cherenkov (see Cherenkov radiation). In 1937, Frank and Tamm discovered that the light waves emitted when gamma rays pass through a liquid medium are produced by electrically charged particles moving faster than the speed of light in the medium.

Frank, Jacob, c.1726-1791, Polish Jewish sectarian and adventurer, b. Podolia as Jacob Ben Judah Leib. He founded the Frankists, a heretical Jewish sect that was an anti-Talmudic outgrowth of the mysticism of the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. After traveling in Turkey, where he was called Frank and where he joined the Sabbatean sect, he returned (c.1755) to Podolia. Posing as a Messiah, Frank gathered a following, by whom he was addressed as "holy master." Professing to find in the kabbalah the doctrine of Trinitarianism and feigning conversion to Roman Catholicism, he and the Frankists were baptized (1759). The church, however, soon became suspicious of its new converts' sincerity, and in 1760, Frank was arrested in Warsaw on a charge of heresy and imprisoned in the fortress of Czestochowa; he was released (1773) after that section of Poland became Russian. Moving to Moravia, he enjoyed the favor of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who believed him a disseminator of Christianity. When she discovered his sectarianism, Frank fled to Offenbach, Germany, where he lived in luxury, supported by Polish and Moravian Frankists. Upon his death his daughter Eve became "holy mistress" of the Frankists. She died in 1816, and the sect eventually disappeared, most of its members having actually become Catholics. Many of them later became prominent members of the Polish nobility.

Frank, Leonhard, 1882-1961, German expressionist writer. He gained acclaim with his first novel, The Robber Band (1914, tr. 1928), and it was followed by such works as The Cause of the Crime (1920, tr. 1928), A Middle-Class Man (1924, tr. 1930), and Carl and Anna (1927, tr. 1929), his best-known novel, which he dramatized in 1929. In the Last Coach (1925, tr. 1935) is a volume of short stories. His writing is psychological in approach, antiwar, and shows a compassion for victims of an authoritarian society. Frank fled Germany in 1933 and did not return until after World War II.

Frank, Robert, 1924-, Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker, b. Zurich. He emigrated to the United States in 1947 and became a citizen in 1963. Frank is considered the pioneer of the "snapshot aesthetic," in which the documentary image is rendered bluntly and without conscious artistry. His best-known work is The Americans (1959), a composite portrait of U.S. culture as seen by a relative newcomer. In its 83 black-and-white photographs he presents telling glimpses of clutter and trivia as well as informal pictures of all manner of Americans, often anxious or isolated, in everyday situations throughout the country. These powerfully composed photographs were considered gross, shocking, degrading, and even un-American when they were first published, but soon became an intrinsic part of American iconography, greatly influencing other artists in many media. Frank's films, also documentary in style, include Pull My Daisy (1959-60, with Alfred Leslie), OK, End Here (1963), and Me and My Brother (1965-68).

Frank, Tenney, 1876-1939, American historian, b. Clay Center, Kans. After 1919 he was a professor at Johns Hopkins Among his best-known works are A History of Rome (1923), Economic History of Rome (1920, rev. ed. 1927), and Catullus and Horace (1928, repr. 1965).

Fay, Frank, 1870-1931, and W. G. Fay, 1872-1947, brothers, both Irish actors. The Fay brothers formed the Irish National Theatre, an amateur group founded on the conviction that only Irish actors could perform in Irish plays. Around the nucleus of this company Dublin's Abbey Theatre was formed in 1904 with W. G. Fay as its guiding force. The Fays emigrated to the United States in 1908, where they appeared in a repertory of Irish plays.

Norris, Frank (Benjamin Franklin Norris), 1870-1902, American novelist, b. Chicago. After studying in Paris, at the Univ. of California (1890-94), and at Harvard, he spent several years as a war correspondent in South Africa (1895-96) and Cuba (1898). His proletarian novel McTeague (1899) was influenced by the experimental naturalism of Zola. His most impressive works were two parts of a proposed novelistic trilogy entitled "The Epic of Wheat"—The Octopus (1901), depicting the brutal struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad, and The Pit (1903), dealing with speculation on the Chicago grain market. The trilogy and Norris's burgeoning literary career were cut short by his death from a ruptured appendix. The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903). an essay collection, contains his idealistic views on the role of the writer.

Knox, Frank (William Franklin Knox), 1874-1944, U.S. Secretary of the Navy (1940-44), b. Boston. He joined the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and also served in World War I. Knox was general manager (1928-31) of the Hearst papers and after 1931 owner of the Chicago Daily News. A strong opponent of the New Deal, he was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Vice President in 1936. In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seeking to create national unity in defense preparations, made Knox Secretary of the Navy. He died in office and was succeeded by James V. Forrestal.

Hague, Frank, 1876-1956, American politician, mayor of Jersey City, N.J., b. Jersey City. He worked his way up through the ranks of the local Democratic machine and was elected (1913) to the city board of commissioners. As mayor of Jersey City (1917-47), Hague built one of the strongest urban political machines in the nation. After his election to the Democratic National Committee in 1922, he was the most powerful Democrat in the state and a force to be reckoned with at national conventions. Accused of corruption and large-scale intimidation of municipal employees, Hague was a controversial figure. He lost much of his power in the 1949 elections, when his nephew, Frank Hague Eggers, was defeated in the mayoralty race; and in 1952 the state Democratic organization ousted him from his post as national committeeman.

Stella, Frank, 1936-, American artist, b. Malden, Mass. In his early "black paintings" Stella exhibits the precision and rationality that characterized minimalism, employing parallel angular stripes to emphasize the rectangular shape of his large canvases. His innovative and influential use of irregularly shaped canvases first appeared in his metallic series in 1960. Later examples of his work stress color in decorative curved motifs. In the 1970s and 80s, Stella abandoned the studied, minimalist aesthetic in favor of a more improvised, dynamic, and dramatic idiom in mixed-media. During that time he abandoned flat paintings and instead created large, jutting, multipart, three-dimensional painting-constructions that often incorporate bright colors, enlarged versions of French curves, and lively brushstroke patterns.

Stella's work became fully three-dimensional in the early 1990s in a series of dense abstract sculptures composed of found and cast elements in stainless steel and bronze. These unpainted and often large-scale metal wall constructions, with their tangled, layered, and looping shapes, project an air of vibrant spontaneity. One of his most important and monumental sculptures is Prince of Homburg (1995-2001), installed outside the National Gallery of Art's East Building, Washington, D.C. Throughout his career, Stella also has been a prolific printmaker. The Whitney Museum, New York City, has several of his paintings, and his works are included in numerous museum and corporate collections worldwide.

Loesser, Frank (Frank Henry Loesser), 1910-69, American lyricist and songwriter, b. New York City. He is noted for smart, often witty lyrics that catch the tone and rhythms of vernacular speech. Loesser rejected the classical music training of his pianist father and brother and began writing show tunes during the year he spent at New York's City College. He moved to Hollywood in 1936 and from the late 1930s to the early 50s wrote songs for dozens of films. Among his earliest movie hits was "Two Sleepy People" (1938; written with Hoagy Carmichael). While a soldier in World War II he begin writing music in addition to words for such songs as "Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition." Loesser won an Oscar for "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (1949) and wrote the score for his last movie musical, Hans Christian Andersen, in 1952. His first Broadway hit came with the score for Where's Charley? (1948; film, 1952) and he struck Broadway gold with the scores for Guys and Dolls (1950; film, 1955); The Most Happy Fella (1956), for which he also wrote the book; and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1962, Pulitzer Prize; film, 1967).

Duveneck, Frank, 1848-1919, American portrait and genre painter and teacher, b. Covington, Ky., studied in Cincinnati and in Munich. In 1875 he showed a group of his canvases in Boston, where they created a sensation because of their bold brushwork, rich color, and forceful presentation of personality. He taught for many years in Munich and, after 1889, in Cincinnati. His influence on his contemporaries was great, particularly on William Chase and his followers and on the ashcan school. His Whistling Boy (Cincinnati Art Mus.) and Old Woman (Metropolitan Mus.) are characteristic of his portrait studies.

Swinnerton, Frank, 1884-1982, English novelist and critic, b. Wood Green, Middlesex. In addition to serving variously as an editor and a drama critic he wrote over 30 novels. For half a century, Swinnerton's novels displayed the iconoclasm and sensuality of his modernist roots. They include Nocturne (1917), Harvest Comedy (1937), A Month in Gordon Square (1953), and Nor All Thy Tears (1972). He also wrote studies of Gissing (1912) and Stevenson (1914).

Robinson, Frank, 1935-, American baseball player and manager, b. Beaumont, Tex. Entering major-league baseball as an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, Robinson was named the National League's rookie of the year in 1956 and most valuable player (MVP) in 1961. Traded to the American League's Baltimore Orioles in 1965, he won the batting triple crown and the MVP award in 1966, becoming the first player ever to be voted MVP in both leagues. After stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers (1972) and California Angels (1973-74), he played (1974-76) for the Cleveland Indians, where he also became (1975-77) the first African-American manager in major-league history. Robinson subsequently managed the San Francisco Giants (1981-84) and Orioles (1988-91) and was manager of the year in 1982 and 1989. From 1991 to 1994 he was assistant general manager with the Orioles. He became director of baseball operations for the Arizona Fall League and consultant to the commissioner for special projects in major-league baseball's central office in 1997 and vice president for on-field operations in 2000. From 2002 to 2006 he was manager of the Montreal Expos, who moved to Washington, D.C., and became the Nationals after 2004.

Kupka, Frank or František, 1871-1957, Czech painter, etcher, and illustrator. Kupka illustrated works by Reclus and Leconte de Lisle and an edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. In 1911 he joined the orphism movement led by Delaunay. He was one of the first painters to explore pure geometric abstraction. His decorative style was affected by the "machine esthetic" of the 1920s. Kupka is well represented in the Musée national d'Art moderne, Paris, and in the National Gallery, Prague.

Bainimarama, Frank (Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama) 1954-, Fijian naval officer and government leader. He rose through the ranks of the Royal Fijian Navy, serving in South America, New Zealand, and the United States, and in 1984 assumed command of his first ship. He also was part of the multinational observer force in the Sinai (1986-87). In 1988 he became head of Fiji's navy. Bainimarama was appointed chief of staff of Fiji's military in 1997 and was named a commodore two years later. After a putsch attempt in 2000, the military intervened and Bainimarama was acting head of state for three months before Ratu Josefa Iloilo became president. In 2006, after years of controversy and tension between the government and military, Bainimarama ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and became interim president. In Jan., 2007, he returned Iloilo to the presidency, and Iloilo named Bainimarama interim prime minister. When, in Apr., 2009, the courts declared Bainimarama's government illegal, he resigned as prime minister, but he was reappointed after the president revoked the constitution.

Wedekind, Frank, 1864-1918, German dramatist. He was also a journalist and publicist, and he worked on the staff of Simplicissimus. A forerunner of the expressionists, he employed grotesque fantasy and unconventional characters in order to attack the bourgeois ideals and hypocrisy of his society. Wedekind was particularly concerned with sexual themes, stressing the primacy of man's instincts. His plays include Frühlings Erwachen (1891, tr. The Awakening of Spring, 1909), Der Erdgeist (1895, tr. Earth Spirit, 1914), and Die Büchse der Pandora (1903, tr. Pandora's Box, 1918). Alban Berg compiled the libretto for his opera Lulu (1934) from the latter two.

(born June 8, 1867, Richland Center, Wis., U.S.—died April 9, 1959, Phoenix, Ariz.) U.S. architect. After studying engineering briefly at the University of Wisconsin, he worked for the firm of Dankmar Adler (1844–1900) and Louis Sullivan in Chicago before opening his own practice there in 1893. Wright became the chief practitioner of the Prairie school, building about 50 Prairie houses from 1900 to 1910. Early nonresidential buildings include the forward-looking Larkin Building in Buffalo, N.Y. (1904; destroyed 1950), and Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. (1906). In 1911 he began work on his own house, Taliesin, near Spring Green, Wis. The lavish Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1915–22, dismantled 1967) was significant for its revolutionary floating cantilever construction, which made it one of the only large buildings to withstand the earthquake of 1923. In the 1930s he designed his low-cost Usonian houses, but his most admired house, Fallingwater, in Bear Run, Pa. (1936), is an extravagant country retreat cantilevered over a waterfall. His Johnson Wax Building (1936–39), an example of humane workplace design, touched off an avalanche of major commissions. Of particular note is the Guggenheim Museum (1956–59), which has no separate floor levels but instead uses a spiral ramp, realizing Wright's ideal of a continuous space. Throughout his career he retained the use of ornamental detail, earthy colours, and rich textural effects. His sensitive use of materials helped to control and perfect his dynamic expression of space, which opened a new era in American architecture. Often considered the greatest U.S. architect of all time, his greatest legacy is “organic architecture,” or the idea that buildings harmonize both with their inhabitants and with their environment.

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(born Nov. 24, 1925, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 27, 2008, Stamford, Conn.) U.S. writer and editor. He attended Yale University, where he was chairman of the Yale Daily News. In 1955 he founded the National Review; as editor in chief, he used the journal as a forum for his conservative views. His column “On the Right” was syndicated in 1962 and eventually appeared in more than 200 newspapers. From 1966 to 1999 he hosted Firing Line, a weekly television interview program in which he often employed his wit and debating skills against ideological opponents. His books include God and Man at Yale (1951), Rumbles Left and Right (1963), and a series of spy novels.

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(born Dec. 17, 1908, Grand Valley, Colo., U.S.—died Sept. 8, 1980, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. chemist. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley and later taught there and at the University of Chicago and UCLA. With the Manhattan Project, he helped develop a method for separating uranium isotopes and showed that tritium is a product of cosmic radiation. In 1947 he and his students developed carbon-14 dating, which proved to be an extremely valuable tool for archaeology, anthropology, and earth science and earned him a 1960 Nobel Prize.

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(born June 1, 1907, Coventry, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Aug. 8, 1996, Columbia, Md., U.S.) British aviation engineer and pilot who invented the jet engine. He obtained his first patent for a turbojet engine in 1930, and in 1936 he cofounded Power Jets Ltd. The outbreak of World War II spurred the British government to support Whittle's work, and the first jet-powered aircraft took off in 1941. He was knighted in 1948 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1986.

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orig. Benjamin Franklin Wedekind

(born July 24, 1864, Hannover, Hanover—died March 9, 1918, Munich, Ger.) German actor and playwright. He lived in Switzerland (1872–84) and then in Munich, where he worked at various jobs, including journalist and cabaret performer. He wrote plays from 1891, when his tragedy The Awakening of Spring created a scandal with its theme of awakening adolescent sexuality. In his “Lulu” cycle, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the amoral Lulu. His plays used episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature, prefiguring the Theatre of the Absurd and forming a transition from realism to Expressionism.

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(born May 12, 1936, Malden, Mass., U.S.) U.S. painter. He moved to New York City after studying history at Princeton University and there began his innovative “black paintings” (1958–60), incorporating symmetrical series of thin white stripes that replicated the canvas shape when seen against their black backgrounds. As a leading figure of Minimalism, in the mid 1960s he began using polychromy in an influential series marked by intersecting geometric curvilinear shapes and plays of vivid and harmonious colours. In the 1970s he began producing sensuously coloured, mixed-media reliefs featuring more organic shapes. He was given retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 and 1987.

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(born Nov. 21, 1920, Donora, Pa., U.S.) U.S. baseball player. Musial played his entire career for the St. Louis Cardinals (1941–63), starting as a pitcher but switching to the outfield and ultimately to first base. A left-handed batter, “Stan the Man” became one of the game's great hitters. His lifetime totals of hits (3,630), runs (1,949), and times at bat were second only to those of Ty Cobb, his total of runs batted in (1,951) was the fourth-highest of all time, and his total of extra-base hits (1,477) was only surpassed later by Hank Aaron. Popular among fans for his unfailing graciousness, he became a Cardinals executive after retirement.

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(born June 1, 1907, Coventry, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Aug. 8, 1996, Columbia, Md., U.S.) British aviation engineer and pilot who invented the jet engine. He obtained his first patent for a turbojet engine in 1930, and in 1936 he cofounded Power Jets Ltd. The outbreak of World War II spurred the British government to support Whittle's work, and the first jet-powered aircraft took off in 1941. He was knighted in 1948 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1986.

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(born Sept. 3, 1899, Traralgon, Vic., Austl.—died Aug. 31, 1985, Melbourne, Vic.) Australian physician and virologist. Burnet received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne. He later discovered a method for identifying bacteria by the viruses (bacteriophages) that attack them, and he shared a 1960 Nobel Prize with Peter Medawar for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance to tissue transplants. He was knighted in 1951.

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orig. Francis Albert Sinatra

(born Dec. 12, 1915, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died May 14, 1998, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. singer and actor. Sinatra began his singing career in the mid-1930s and was “discovered” by trumpeter Harry James, who immediately recruited him. Sinatra achieved sweeping national popularity in 1940–42 while singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. He sang on the radio program Your Hit Parade (1943–45), while becoming a favourite performer in theatres and nightclubs. In the 1940s he co-starred in a number of musical films with dancer Gene Kelly. His popularity suddenly declined about 1948, but his performance in From Here to Eternity (1953, Academy Award) revived his flagging career, and he later starred in many acclaimed films, including musicals such as Guys and Dolls (1955) and dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962). After 1953 he performed and recorded using arrangements by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins, reaching his peak in albums such as Only the Lonely (1958). In 1961 he founded Reprise Records. His masterly performances, alternately swinging and affectingly melancholic, brought him a success unparalleled in the history of American popular music.

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(born Aug. 31, 1935, Beaumont, Tex., U.S.) U.S. baseball player and the first black manager in major league baseball. Robinson played principally for the Cincinnati Reds (1956–65) and Baltimore Orioles (1966–71). In 1966 he won the triple crown, leading the league in home runs (49), runs batted in (122), and batting average (.316). He later managed the Cleveland Indians (1975–77), San Francisco Giants (1981–84), Baltimore Orioles (1988–91), and Montreal Expos (2002–06; the franchise moved to Washington, D.C., in 2005 and was renamed the Nationals).

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(born Nov. 9, 1924, Zürich, Switz.) Swiss-born U.S. photographer. In the 1940s he worked as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. He abandoned fashion work in 1947 to travel in the U.S. and South America and explore the use of the 35-mm camera. His collection The Americans (1959), with its gritty, discordant images of 1950s America, had enormous influence and established him as a major figure. After 1959 Frank turned to filmmaking; his short film Pull My Daisy (1959), a collaboration with Jack Kerouac, became an underground classic. A major later collection is Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994).

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orig. Michael O'Donovan

(born 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ire.—died March 10, 1966, Dublin) Irish writer. Brought up in poverty, O'Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which apparently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th–20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945).

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(born March 5, 1870, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Oct. 25, 1902, San Francisco, Calif.) U.S. novelist and short-story writer. Norris initially worked as an overseas correspondent and in publishing. He became the first important American author to embrace naturalism. McTeague (1899) is a portrait of an acquisitive society. He adopted a more humanitarian ideal beginning with his masterpiece, The Octopus (1901), the first novel of a projected trilogy dealing with the economic and social forces involved in the wheat industry. The second part, The Pit, appeared in 1903, but the third was unwritten at his death. Despite romanticizing tendencies, his works present a vivid, authentic picture of life in California in his day.

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(born Nov. 21, 1920, Donora, Pa., U.S.) U.S. baseball player. Musial played his entire career for the St. Louis Cardinals (1941–63), starting as a pitcher but switching to the outfield and ultimately to first base. A left-handed batter, “Stan the Man” became one of the game's great hitters. His lifetime totals of hits (3,630), runs (1,949), and times at bat were second only to those of Ty Cobb, his total of runs batted in (1,951) was the fourth-highest of all time, and his total of extra-base hits (1,477) was only surpassed later by Hank Aaron. Popular among fans for his unfailing graciousness, he became a Cardinals executive after retirement.

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orig. William Francis Murphy

(born April 13, 1890, Harbor Beach, Mich., U.S.—died July 19, 1949, Detroit, Mich.) U.S. Supreme Court justice (1940–49). After serving in World War I, he held several elective posts, including mayor of Detroit (1930–33). He was governor-general (1933–35) and U.S. high commissioner (1935–36) of the Philippines. Elected governor of Michigan (1937–38), he refused to use troops to break sit-down strikes by automobile workers. As U.S. attorney general (1939–40), he established the Justice Department's civil rights unit. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, he strongly defended civil rights and dissented in a case upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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(born Aug. 21, 1854, Mercer, Maine, U.S.—died Dec. 22, 1925, New York City, N.Y.) U.S. newspaper and magazine publisher. He managed a telegraph office before moving to New York City, where he founded Golden Argosy (1882), later renamed Argosy Magazine; and Munsey's Magazine (1889), the first inexpensive, general-circulation, illustrated magazine in the U.S. He acquired several newspapers in Baltimore and New York, some of which disappeared in profitable mergers. He viewed his publications purely as moneymaking enterprises and maintained colourless editorial policies. He left most of his large fortune to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Learn more about Munsey, Frank Andrew with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 15, 1856, Chittenango, N.Y., U.S.—died May 6, 1919, Hollywood, Calif.) U.S. writer of children's books. Baum achieved commercial success with his first book, Father Goose (1899), and followed it the next year with the even more popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote 13 more Oz books, which acquired a huge readership. The series was continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson after his death.

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(born June 29, 1910, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 28, 1969, New York City) U.S. composer, librettist, and lyricist. The son of a piano teacher, in 1936 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked with Burton Lane, Jule Styne, Jimmy McHugh, and Hoagy Carmichael. His wartime songs include “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” and “What Do You Do in the Infantry?”; postwar hits include “On a Slow Boat to China” and “Baby It's Cold Outside” (Academy Award, 1949). His first Broadway musical was Where's Charley? (1948; film, 1952). In 1950 he produced Guys and Dolls (film, 1955), one of the greatest American musicals. It was followed by The Most Happy Fella (1956) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962, Pulitzer Prize). His work for film includes the score for Hans Christian Andersen (1952).

Learn more about Loesser, Frank (Henry) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Dec. 17, 1908, Grand Valley, Colo., U.S.—died Sept. 8, 1980, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. chemist. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley and later taught there and at the University of Chicago and UCLA. With the Manhattan Project, he helped develop a method for separating uranium isotopes and showed that tritium is a product of cosmic radiation. In 1947 he and his students developed carbon-14 dating, which proved to be an extremely valuable tool for archaeology, anthropology, and earth science and earned him a 1960 Nobel Prize.

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(born May 15, 1856, Chittenango, N.Y., U.S.—died May 6, 1919, Hollywood, Calif.) U.S. writer of children's books. Baum achieved commercial success with his first book, Father Goose (1899), and followed it the next year with the even more popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote 13 more Oz books, which acquired a huge readership. The series was continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson after his death.

Learn more about Baum, L(yman) Frank with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Nov. 7, 1885, White Oak township, McLean county, Ill., U.S.—died April 15, 1972, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. economist. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1916. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1927 to 1952; Milton Friedman was one of the many students he influenced. His book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921) distinguished between insurable and uninsurable risks and asserted that profit was the reward entrepreneurs earned for bearing uninsurable risk. His monograph “Economic Organization” is a classic exposition of microeconomic theory. He is considered the founder of the Chicago school of economics.

Learn more about Knight, Frank H(yneman) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Dec. 22, 1856, Potsdam, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 21, 1937, St. Paul, Minn.) U.S. lawyer and diplomat. He represented the U.S. government in antitrust cases before serving in the U.S. Senate (1917–23) and as U.S. ambassador to Britain (1923–25). Appointed U.S. secretary of state (1925–29) by Pres. Calvin Coolidge, he negotiated the multinational Kellogg-Briand Pact, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1929. He later served on the Permanent Court of International Justice (1930–35).

Learn more about Kellogg, Frank B(illings) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. Jacob Leibowicz

(born 1726, Berezanka or Korolowka, Galicia, Pol.—died Dec. 10, 1791, Offenbach, Hessen) Jewish false messiah. He was an uneducated visionary who claimed to be the reincarnation of Shabbetai Tzevi. He proclaimed himself messiah in 1751 and founded the Frankist, or Zoharist, sect, based on the Sefer ha-zohar, which he sought to put in the place of the Torah. The sect rejected traditional Judaism, and their practices, including orgiastic rites, led the Jewish community to excommunicate them in 1756. Protected by Roman Catholic authorities, who hoped Frank would help in the conversion of the Jews, Frank and his followers were baptized in Poland. In 1760 he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, who had realized that Frank's followers regarded Frank, not Jesus, as the messiah. Freed in 1773 by invading Russians, he settled in Germany and lived as a baron until his death.

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(born Feb. 28, 1929, Toronto, Ont., Can.) Canadian-born U.S architect. He studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard University. In his early buildings, his use of inexpensive materials (chain-link fencing, plywood, corrugated steel) gave many of his projects an unfinished, whimsical air. His structures are often characterized by unconventional or distorted shapes that have a sculptural, fragmented, or collagelike quality. In designing public buildings, he tends to cluster small units within a larger space rather than creating monolithic structures, thus emphasizing human scale. Of particular note is his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1991–97) in Spain, a shimmering pile of sharply twisting, curving shapes surfaced in titanium. Gehry won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989.

Learn more about Gehry, Frank O(wen) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Nov. 9, 1924, Zürich, Switz.) Swiss-born U.S. photographer. In the 1940s he worked as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. He abandoned fashion work in 1947 to travel in the U.S. and South America and explore the use of the 35-mm camera. His collection The Americans (1959), with its gritty, discordant images of 1950s America, had enormous influence and established him as a major figure. After 1959 Frank turned to filmmaking; his short film Pull My Daisy (1959), a collaboration with Jack Kerouac, became an underground classic. A major later collection is Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994).

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orig. Jacob Leibowicz

(born 1726, Berezanka or Korolowka, Galicia, Pol.—died Dec. 10, 1791, Offenbach, Hessen) Jewish false messiah. He was an uneducated visionary who claimed to be the reincarnation of Shabbetai Tzevi. He proclaimed himself messiah in 1751 and founded the Frankist, or Zoharist, sect, based on the Sefer ha-zohar, which he sought to put in the place of the Torah. The sect rejected traditional Judaism, and their practices, including orgiastic rites, led the Jewish community to excommunicate them in 1756. Protected by Roman Catholic authorities, who hoped Frank would help in the conversion of the Jews, Frank and his followers were baptized in Poland. In 1760 he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, who had realized that Frank's followers regarded Frank, not Jesus, as the messiah. Freed in 1773 by invading Russians, he settled in Germany and lived as a baron until his death.

Learn more about Frank, Jacob with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born June 12, 1929, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.—died March 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover) German diarist. Frank was a young Jewish girl who kept a record of the two years her family spent in hiding in Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution. After their discovery by the Gestapo in 1944, the family was transported to concentration camps; Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Friends searching the hiding place found her diary, which her father published as The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). Precocious in style and insight, it traces her emotional growth amid adversity and is a classic of war literature.

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orig. Benjamin Franklin Wedekind

(born July 24, 1864, Hannover, Hanover—died March 9, 1918, Munich, Ger.) German actor and playwright. He lived in Switzerland (1872–84) and then in Munich, where he worked at various jobs, including journalist and cabaret performer. He wrote plays from 1891, when his tragedy The Awakening of Spring created a scandal with its theme of awakening adolescent sexuality. In his “Lulu” cycle, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the amoral Lulu. His plays used episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature, prefiguring the Theatre of the Absurd and forming a transition from realism to Expressionism.

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orig. Francis Albert Sinatra

(born Dec. 12, 1915, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died May 14, 1998, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. singer and actor. Sinatra began his singing career in the mid-1930s and was “discovered” by trumpeter Harry James, who immediately recruited him. Sinatra achieved sweeping national popularity in 1940–42 while singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. He sang on the radio program Your Hit Parade (1943–45), while becoming a favourite performer in theatres and nightclubs. In the 1940s he co-starred in a number of musical films with dancer Gene Kelly. His popularity suddenly declined about 1948, but his performance in From Here to Eternity (1953, Academy Award) revived his flagging career, and he later starred in many acclaimed films, including musicals such as Guys and Dolls (1955) and dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962). After 1953 he performed and recorded using arrangements by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins, reaching his peak in albums such as Only the Lonely (1958). In 1961 he founded Reprise Records. His masterly performances, alternately swinging and affectingly melancholic, brought him a success unparalleled in the history of American popular music.

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(born Aug. 31, 1935, Beaumont, Tex., U.S.) U.S. baseball player and the first black manager in major league baseball. Robinson played principally for the Cincinnati Reds (1956–65) and Baltimore Orioles (1966–71). In 1966 he won the triple crown, leading the league in home runs (49), runs batted in (122), and batting average (.316). He later managed the Cleveland Indians (1975–77), San Francisco Giants (1981–84), Baltimore Orioles (1988–91), and Montreal Expos (2002–06; the franchise moved to Washington, D.C., in 2005 and was renamed the Nationals).

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(born July 14, 1895, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.—died April 14, 1978, Cambridge) British literary critic. He attended and later taught at Cambridge University. He brought a new seriousness to criticism, believing that the critic's duty is to assess works according to the author's moral position. He cofounded Scrutiny, a journal (published 1932–53) often regarded as his greatest contribution to English letters. His books include New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and The Great Tradition (1948), in which he reassessed the English novel.

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(born May 12, 1936, Malden, Mass., U.S.) U.S. painter. He moved to New York City after studying history at Princeton University and there began his innovative “black paintings” (1958–60), incorporating symmetrical series of thin white stripes that replicated the canvas shape when seen against their black backgrounds. As a leading figure of Minimalism, in the mid 1960s he began using polychromy in an influential series marked by intersecting geometric curvilinear shapes and plays of vivid and harmonious colours. In the 1970s he began producing sensuously coloured, mixed-media reliefs featuring more organic shapes. He was given retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 and 1987.

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(born Feb. 28, 1929, Toronto, Ont., Can.) Canadian-born U.S architect. He studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard University. In his early buildings, his use of inexpensive materials (chain-link fencing, plywood, corrugated steel) gave many of his projects an unfinished, whimsical air. His structures are often characterized by unconventional or distorted shapes that have a sculptural, fragmented, or collagelike quality. In designing public buildings, he tends to cluster small units within a larger space rather than creating monolithic structures, thus emphasizing human scale. Of particular note is his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1991–97) in Spain, a shimmering pile of sharply twisting, curving shapes surfaced in titanium. Gehry won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989.

Learn more about Gehry, Frank O(wen) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. Michael O'Donovan

(born 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ire.—died March 10, 1966, Dublin) Irish writer. Brought up in poverty, O'Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which apparently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th–20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945).

Learn more about O'Connor, Frank with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. William Francis Murphy

(born April 13, 1890, Harbor Beach, Mich., U.S.—died July 19, 1949, Detroit, Mich.) U.S. Supreme Court justice (1940–49). After serving in World War I, he held several elective posts, including mayor of Detroit (1930–33). He was governor-general (1933–35) and U.S. high commissioner (1935–36) of the Philippines. Elected governor of Michigan (1937–38), he refused to use troops to break sit-down strikes by automobile workers. As U.S. attorney general (1939–40), he established the Justice Department's civil rights unit. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, he strongly defended civil rights and dissented in a case upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Learn more about Murphy, Frank with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born June 8, 1867, Richland Center, Wis., U.S.—died April 9, 1959, Phoenix, Ariz.) U.S. architect. After studying engineering briefly at the University of Wisconsin, he worked for the firm of Dankmar Adler (1844–1900) and Louis Sullivan in Chicago before opening his own practice there in 1893. Wright became the chief practitioner of the Prairie school, building about 50 Prairie houses from 1900 to 1910. Early nonresidential buildings include the forward-looking Larkin Building in Buffalo, N.Y. (1904; destroyed 1950), and Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. (1906). In 1911 he began work on his own house, Taliesin, near Spring Green, Wis. The lavish Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1915–22, dismantled 1967) was significant for its revolutionary floating cantilever construction, which made it one of the only large buildings to withstand the earthquake of 1923. In the 1930s he designed his low-cost Usonian houses, but his most admired house, Fallingwater, in Bear Run, Pa. (1936), is an extravagant country retreat cantilevered over a waterfall. His Johnson Wax Building (1936–39), an example of humane workplace design, touched off an avalanche of major commissions. Of particular note is the Guggenheim Museum (1956–59), which has no separate floor levels but instead uses a spiral ramp, realizing Wright's ideal of a continuous space. Throughout his career he retained the use of ornamental detail, earthy colours, and rich textural effects. His sensitive use of materials helped to control and perfect his dynamic expression of space, which opened a new era in American architecture. Often considered the greatest U.S. architect of all time, his greatest legacy is “organic architecture,” or the idea that buildings harmonize both with their inhabitants and with their environment.

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(born Nov. 7, 1885, White Oak township, McLean county, Ill., U.S.—died April 15, 1972, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. economist. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1916. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1927 to 1952; Milton Friedman was one of the many students he influenced. His book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921) distinguished between insurable and uninsurable risks and asserted that profit was the reward entrepreneurs earned for bearing uninsurable risk. His monograph “Economic Organization” is a classic exposition of microeconomic theory. He is considered the founder of the Chicago school of economics.

Learn more about Knight, Frank H(yneman) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born June 29, 1910, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 28, 1969, New York City) U.S. composer, librettist, and lyricist. The son of a piano teacher, in 1936 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked with Burton Lane, Jule Styne, Jimmy McHugh, and Hoagy Carmichael. His wartime songs include “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” and “What Do You Do in the Infantry?”; postwar hits include “On a Slow Boat to China” and “Baby It's Cold Outside” (Academy Award, 1949). His first Broadway musical was Where's Charley? (1948; film, 1952). In 1950 he produced Guys and Dolls (film, 1955), one of the greatest American musicals. It was followed by The Most Happy Fella (1956) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962, Pulitzer Prize). His work for film includes the score for Hans Christian Andersen (1952).

Learn more about Loesser, Frank (Henry) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 18, 1897, near Palermo, Sicily, Italy—died Sept. 3, 1991, La Quinta, Calif., U.S.) U.S. film director. At age six he immigrated with his family to the U.S. After holding various jobs in the film industry, he emerged as a major director with That Certain Thing (1928) and Platinum Blonde (1931). He won Academy Awards for It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), stories that portray naive idealists who triumph over more worldly types. He chose the same theme for his next film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) but departed from his usual style in Lost Horizon (1937) and Meet John Doe (1941). Capra also won a third Academy Award for You Can't Take It with You (1938). He made the documentary series Why We Fight during World War II and the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

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(born Dec. 22, 1856, Potsdam, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 21, 1937, St. Paul, Minn.) U.S. lawyer and diplomat. He represented the U.S. government in antitrust cases before serving in the U.S. Senate (1917–23) and as U.S. ambassador to Britain (1923–25). Appointed U.S. secretary of state (1925–29) by Pres. Calvin Coolidge, he negotiated the multinational Kellogg-Briand Pact, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1929. He later served on the Permanent Court of International Justice (1930–35).

Learn more about Kellogg, Frank B(illings) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Aug. 21, 1854, Mercer, Maine, U.S.—died Dec. 22, 1925, New York City, N.Y.) U.S. newspaper and magazine publisher. He managed a telegraph office before moving to New York City, where he founded Golden Argosy (1882), later renamed Argosy Magazine; and Munsey's Magazine (1889), the first inexpensive, general-circulation, illustrated magazine in the U.S. He acquired several newspapers in Baltimore and New York, some of which disappeared in profitable mergers. He viewed his publications purely as moneymaking enterprises and maintained colourless editorial policies. He left most of his large fortune to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Learn more about Munsey, Frank Andrew with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 18, 1897, near Palermo, Sicily, Italy—died Sept. 3, 1991, La Quinta, Calif., U.S.) U.S. film director. At age six he immigrated with his family to the U.S. After holding various jobs in the film industry, he emerged as a major director with That Certain Thing (1928) and Platinum Blonde (1931). He won Academy Awards for It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), stories that portray naive idealists who triumph over more worldly types. He chose the same theme for his next film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) but departed from his usual style in Lost Horizon (1937) and Meet John Doe (1941). Capra also won a third Academy Award for You Can't Take It with You (1938). He made the documentary series Why We Fight during World War II and the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Learn more about Capra, Frank with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Sept. 3, 1899, Traralgon, Vic., Austl.—died Aug. 31, 1985, Melbourne, Vic.) Australian physician and virologist. Burnet received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne. He later discovered a method for identifying bacteria by the viruses (bacteriophages) that attack them, and he shared a 1960 Nobel Prize with Peter Medawar for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance to tissue transplants. He was knighted in 1951.

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(born Nov. 24, 1925, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 27, 2008, Stamford, Conn.) U.S. writer and editor. He attended Yale University, where he was chairman of the Yale Daily News. In 1955 he founded the National Review; as editor in chief, he used the journal as a forum for his conservative views. His column “On the Right” was syndicated in 1962 and eventually appeared in more than 200 newspapers. From 1966 to 1999 he hosted Firing Line, a weekly television interview program in which he often employed his wit and debating skills against ideological opponents. His books include God and Man at Yale (1951), Rumbles Left and Right (1963), and a series of spy novels.

Learn more about Buckley, William F(rank), Jr. with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born June 12, 1929, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.—died March 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover) German diarist. Frank was a young Jewish girl who kept a record of the two years her family spent in hiding in Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution. After their discovery by the Gestapo in 1944, the family was transported to concentration camps; Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Friends searching the hiding place found her diary, which her father published as The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). Precocious in style and insight, it traces her emotional growth amid adversity and is a classic of war literature.

Learn more about Frank, Anne(lies Marie) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Frank may refer to:

• A member of the medieval Germanic people, the Franks
• Frank (given name)
• Frank (surname)
• Talk to FRANK the British Government drugs awareness campaign
• Franked mail, the ability to send mail by one's signature rather than by postage
• Nakajima Ki-84 (Nato code: Frank) Japanese WWII fighter aircraft.

In currency

• Swiss frank (or franc), the currency of Switzerland since 1850
• Liechtenstein frank, the currency of Liechtenstein since 1920
• Westphalian frank, currency of the Kingdom of Westphalia between 1808 and 1813

In music

• Frank, an album by Squeeze
• Frank, an Amy Winehouse album
• Frank (band), a four-piece girl band created for a Channel 4 comedy drama series
• F.R.A.N.K., a British born DJ

In geography

• Frank, Alberta, a small community in the Crowsnest Pass at the southern end of the Canadian Rockies
• Frank, West Virginia, an unincorporated community located in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, USA
• Frank Slide, a natural landslide feature in the southern Rocky Mountains of Canada

In physics

• Ilya Frank, a Soviet physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1958

In popular culture

• Frank (fictional rabbit), man-sized rabbit from the movie Donnie Darko
• Frank (comics), series of experimental comic books by Jim Woodring
• Frank (magazine), a Canadian scandal sheet
• Frank: Academics for the Real World, a review published by the Clinton School of Public Service
• Frank and Ernest (comic strip), comic strip
• Totally Frank, a comedy drama series
• TV's Frank, character from Mystery Science Theater 3000
• Franky, cyborg from anime and manga One Piece.
• Franky G, an American film and television actor
• Franky Lee, a Swedish punk-rock
• Frank Rossitano, a character on 30 Rock.
• Frank Caliendo, an American comedy actor.
• Frank TV, a show starring Frank Caliendo.

In video games

• Frank "The hunter", one of the player's wingmen in the game Blazing Angels
• Frank Tenpenny, a crooked police officer in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Frank West, main character of Capcom's Dead Rising

Frank may also refer to:

• hot dogs
• Anthe (moon) (code named "Frank"), by the Cassini Imaging Team between its discovery and its official naming

See also

• Franc (disambiguation)
• Franks (disambiguation)
• Franck