Frank was born in Germany to Jewish parents, pacifist writer Leonhard Frank and his second wife Elena Maqenne Penswehr, but his family fled the country when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Frank received schooling in several places in Switzerland, where his family settled, until they emigrated to the United States in 1941. Frank's undergraduate studies were at Swarthmore College, from which he gained an Economics degree in 1950. He earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1957 at the University of Chicago. His doctorate was a study of Soviet agriculture entitled "Growth and Productivity in Ukrainian Agriculture from 1928 to 1955". Ironically, his dissertation supervisor was Milton Friedman, a man whose "laissez faire" approach to economics Frank would later harshly criticize.