Frank was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954, delivering the Bakerian Lecture in 1973. He was knighted in 1977. He was also awarded honorary degrees by seven universities.
In 1963 he won the Fernand Holweck Medal and Prize.
In 1967 he was awarded the A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize. He was also a member of the Materials Science Club Awards Sub-Committee which selected the Griffith medallist for 1972 (L. R. G. Treloar).
In 1994 he was awarded the Royal Societys Copley Medal, its highest honour, "in recognition of his fundamental contribution to the theory of crystal morphology, in particular to the source of dislocations and their consequences in interfaces and crystal growth; to fundamental understanding of liquid crystals and the concept of disclination; and to the extension of crystallinity concepts to aperiodic crystals."'