Association of University Cardiologists
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Charles W. Frank, M.D.
1921 - 2004
Frank was born on May 3, 1921, at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City where his father, who was the medical director, signed his birth certificate.
While at the College, Frank was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He then attended P&S, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha; he received his M.D. in 1944. Frank interned at the Medical Service at Presbyterian Hospital and then served as an Army medical officer before returning to Presbyterian, where he directed the cardiopulmonary laboratory.
Frank’s early studies at Columbia-Presbyterian were related mainly to the effects of atrial fibrillation on cardiac function, and subsequently of the effects of other cardiac arrhythmia on cardiac function. In the early 1950s, Frank collaborated with other faculty at Columbia-Presbyterian on the treatment of acute rheumatic fever. They conducted landmark studies comparing the effects of salicylate and adrenal corticosteroid therapy on the clinical manifestations of acute rheumatic fever and the subsequent development of valvular heart disease.
In 1955, when the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was enrolling its first class, Frank joined the faculty and the attending staff at Bronx Municipal Hospital Center (now Jacobi Medical Center). He set up a cardiac catheterization laboratory, as he had at Columbia, and became one of the preeminent teachers of clinical cardiology and cardiovascular physiology; he was promoted to full professor in 1972.
Frank was a senior member of a group of physicians and epidemiologists who studied patients on the incidence and prognosis of coronary artery disease, and they were among the first who contributed to the understanding of the role of exercise and physical fitness in reducing the risk of cardiovascular events and improving prognosis.
Frank was married for 54 years to the former Ann Marqusee, who died in 2001.