Francis Goddard Slack was born in Superior, Wisconsin, on November 1, 1897. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Georgia in 1918 and entered the U.S. Army, being commissioned a pilot; because World War I ended before his graduation he never engaged in combat flying. In 1921 he entered Columbia University and in 1926 received the Ph.D. in physics.

In 1928, Francis Slack came to Vanderbilt University as associate professor of physics. He immediately began to strengthen teaching and research. One of his first constructive efforts was to organize and equip an advanced laboratory where students might learn the rudiments of electrical measurement and perform such famous experiments as the determination of e, e/m, and h. The Vanderbilt laboratory was unequalled in the South at the time.

In 1939, he was appointed Professor of Physics and chairman of the department. He had a distinguished career in the Southeast as a physics teacher, researcher, and administrator. He was the first physicist at Vanderbilt and indeed in the state of Tennessee to put equal emphasis on teaching and on research at a national-international level. In 1951, Professor Slack stepped down from his position. In 1977 Vanderbilt University established in the Department of Physics and Astronomy an annual lecture series named in honor of Francis G. Slack.