Dr. Frank C. Spencer was born near Haskell, Texas in 1926. Reciving his primary and secondary education in the local school there, he entered college at North Texas State Teacher's College in 1941 at the age of 15. He graduated in two years because of the accelerated curriculum imposed during WWII. In 1943 he was admitted to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine graduating in 1947. He conducted his internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital under Alfred Blalock, MD, which cultivated a lifelong interest in the pioneering work in the new field of cardiac surgery. In 1949 Dr Spencer followed William Longmire, MD, to the Department of Surgery being established at University of California Los Angeles. He worked clinically and in the laboratory with William Muller, MD, and James Maloney, MD. His time at UCLA was interrupted to serve in the United States Navy Medical Corp during the Korean War. There he attained a measure of notoriety for his work to save limbs of wounded soldiers through the repair of arteries through such techniques as saphenous vein interposition grafts. After discharge, he returned to Johns Hopkins in 1953 to complete his surgical residency under Dr Blalock, and later served on the faculty at Hopkins from 1955 to 1961. At Hopkins, he was at one of the leading centers of development and innovation of cardiac surgery. In 1961, Spencer served as Professor of Surgery at the University of Kentucky. In 1966, he accepted the Professor and Chairmanship of the Department of Surgery at New York University School of Medicine, serving in that capacity for 32 years, before retiring from that role in 1998. Dr Spencer has written more than 350 peer-review articles and 38 book chapters or books and is well known and respected by his peers in vascular surgery. Dr Spencer has been elected to high office in several professional organizations, and received numerous awards and recognitions.