Franklin H. Bronson

April 6, 1932 – May 9, 2022

Franklin H. Bronson, Professor Emeritus of Integrative Biology at The University of Texas at Austin, died peacefully on May 9, 2022 in Austin, Texas, his home for 54 years. Frank was born April 6, 1932 in Pawnee City, Nebraska to Harry and Vida Shanklin Bronson, the couple’s third son. While Frank was an infant, his family moved to Washington, Kansas, where Frank lived until entering college.

Frank’s mother quickly realized her youngest son’s sharp intellect and sent him to the first grade at age five, a year early. Frank, dressed in short pants, cried on arrival until he was handed off to be comforted by a veteran classmate, Jack Barley. By the second day, Frank had hidden a pair of bib overalls in a shed behind his house, ditched the short pants for the duration and adapted to academic life. It helped that Frank and Jack enjoyed a boyhood life of exploration and relative independence with regular overnight camping and fishing on local Mill Creek. Frank learned a full complement of outdoorsman’s skills, becoming Kansas’s youngest Eagle Scout. Washington’s small size also afforded maximum opportunities for him to develop leadership skills in the classroom and in team sports. In his 80’s, Frank still laughingly said that his greatest claim to fame was scoring the winning touchdown against Clifton, a neighboring farm town.

Frank heard that if he studied biology for two years at Kansas State University, he could count ducks for the State. An inattentive student during those first years of college, he made a detour from his studies, courtesy of the U.S. Army selective service. Frank was a reluctant and uncooperative soldier during his tour of duty in Japan, spending every free moment hunting Japanese pheasants in the bamboo forests and minimizing his time in company punishment by playing football and boxing. Afterward, Frank returned to his studies at Kansas State as a focused and dedicated student, earning a Bachelor of Science degree, followed by a Master of Science, both in zoology at Kansas State. That work led to his being accepted at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health for further studies with David E. Davis. When Dr. Davis became a Professor at Pennsylvania State University, Frank followed, earning a Ph.D. in zoology at Penn State in 1961.

For the next seven years, Frank worked as a staff scientist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Frank’s research interests during that period focused on reproductive physiology and behavior of inbred mice, with Frank writing the chapter on Reproduction in the Jackson Lab’s book, The Laboratory Mouse, edited by the lab’s director, Earl L. Green.

Toward the end of his tenure at the Jackson Lab, Frank had come to realize that he wanted to teach university students and train graduate students, as well as conduct his own research program. He was recruited by the Department of Zoology (later the Department of Integrative Biology) at The University of Texas at Austin as a tenured Associate Professor, with a suite of laboratory facilities and animal rooms to be built for his research program. In 1968, Frank joined the faculty at UT, and in 1972 was promoted to Professor. In addition, he was instrumental in the Zoology Department’s establishment of an Institute Reproductive Biology, a vehicle for coordination and collaboration among the members of the department’s faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows studying different aspects of reproduction. Frank served as the Institute’s director from 1976 to 2001. Frank’s research was supported consistently by federal grants, primarily through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Frank also served as an ad hoc grant reviewer/consultant to NASA, USDA, NSF, NIH and the National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C.

Throughout his career, Frank’s research focused generally on the reproductive strategies of mammals, including the ecological, behavioral, metabolic and neuroendocrine dimensions of those strategies. His early research focused on the biology of rodent pheromones, early androgen organization of the brain and the multiple effects of steroids on RNA and protein synthesis in the mammalian oviduct. In the later decades of his research career, he had two main interests: the energetic regulation of reproduction, pursued with laboratory rats and mice, and seasonal breeding in relation to latitude, pursued with rodents and bats. He also had a strong interest in mammalian social behavior. In the Addendum, some of Frank’s former postdoctoral fellows and graduate students discuss their experience working with him on research projects in the lab and in the field. The field work, involving collecting animals to study the effects of specific environments on their reproductive strategies, was especially interesting to Frank, in part because of the particular environments involved. In a book Frank wrote to teach high school students the scientific method of investigating research topics, he wrote that he had “studied mammals in the rain forests of Trinidad, a cloud forest in Costa Rica, the llanos of Venezuela, on the Amazon River in Peru, the temperate forest of Australia and at Chernobyl in Ukraine, as well as several regions in the United States.”

Over the course of his career, Frank published around 180 peer-reviewed scientific research papers and wrote chapters in at least five multi-authored books. His graduate-level textbook, Mammalian Reproductive Biology, originally published in 1989 by The University of Chicago Press, is a unique interdisciplinary overview of the way mammals reproduce, synthesizing research done by laboratory physiologists, behaviorists, population ecologists, and animal breeders. The book’s main concern is the way a mammal’s reproduction is regulated by its environment. Environment is defined broadly in the book, and the chapters give equal weight to ecological and physiological factors when considering how variables such as food availability, ambient temperature, photoperiod and social cues interact to regulate a mammal’s reproduction. Particular attention is given to seasonal breeding.

Frank taught a non-majors undergraduate course, “Ecology, Evolution and Society,” and a Plan II version of the same course throughout his tenure at the University, reaching at least 10,000 students in those courses and others. The enthusiasm of these undergraduates taking a science course only because it was required for graduation resulted in Frank’s receiving a President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 1992. He was the first and one of only two zoology professors who have received this award.

Frank taught out of the lab and the classroom, as well. He adapted a lecture from his university course into a book to provide gifted middle and high school students with a blueprint for learning the scientific method in the context of bird and mammal seasonal migration: “Why don’t birds get lost?” Even in the short paragraph about the author in his young adults adventure novel, “The Viking,” Frank asked and answered the question “How can animals survive in conditions too harsh for humans?” Frank relished judging the science fair projects created by students at his daughter Barbara’s school.

In November 1978, Frank was married for the second time to Rebecca Brockett Barnett, a law student at UT, beginning a partnership that tested and expanded his horizons in unforeseen ways. When Rebecca joined Frank in Quebec City upon finishing the Texas bar exam, the two drove to the frontier end of the St. Lawrence River and crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence by ocean ferry to the Gaspe Peninsula to tour Frank’s favorite Atlantic salmon pools on the Matane River. Trout fishing in Baxter State Park in Maine preceded his bride’s discovery and embrace of the Downeast Maine region and Acadia National Park, the location of Frank’s first job as a scientist. From that point on through the next 40 years, at least a part of almost every summer, and many New Years and Fall foliage seasons were spent on the coast of Maine, culminating in the 2004 purchase of a family vacation home on Frenchman’s Bay. All willing and available family members were invited to join in the summer migration to Maine, beginning in 2000 when both of Frank’s children and their spouses had twin sons turning seven—old enough to be captivated by morning trips to the shore, blueberry picking on the carriage road along Duck Brook, hiking in Acadia, sailing, kayaking and whale watching on the ocean, and feasting on lobster, fried clams, local ice cream and popovers. Frank managed to enjoy one last July with family in Maine in 2021.

Frank and Rebecca agreed to base their family on Frank’s two children, Barbara and Steven, who were nearing adulthood when they married. To that end, Frank took Steve duck hunting the morning of their wedding, and the first family Christmas Eve celebration featured a treasure hunt with a duck decoy prize and Maine lobster on the banks of the Pedernales. The treasure hunts, games and lobster Christmas Eves in the Texas hills grew into full family reunions with spouses, five grandchildren, their girlfriends, Rebecca’s nephew and his family, her niece and Frank’s children’s in-laws participating. Frank’s concept of “family” grew to encompass Rebecca’s mom and her mom’s four siblings, Rebecca’s sister and 16 cousins and their several generations of children and grandchildren amounting to a hundred close family members. Frank was a central figure in these Brockette family reunions, as the hero of backyard swimming parties for three tiers of young cousins diving for the quarters Frank tossed in the pool. Frank also was game for the pinatas and the balsa wood airplanes in a way no other adult participated.

Rebecca practiced law in Austin for 12 years after graduating, and except for three big European trips they shared that revolved around invited speeches Frank gave in England, France and Germany, he was the international traveler during this period. Research and speeches took him to Australia, Israel and Germany, among other locales. Then, in 1990, Rebecca’s law firm opened an office in Moscow. Rebecca started studying Russian and auditing law courses in International law and, together, Frank and Rebecca embarked on a grand due diligence tour of European Russia as the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble. In the end, the law firm declined to permit Rebecca to join its new Moscow office, so she resigned the partnership at the end of 1992 after qualifying for a 4-month intensive Russian language course. Frank joined her in Moscow at the end of her course, and 24 hours after his arrival, they departed for an extensive visit to Uzbekistan becoming the first tourists in the newly independent state. Upon flying back to Moscow to take their separate flights back to Austin, Frank narrowly missed ending up in Russian immigration jail because of an expired visa.

An international law practice for Rebecca awaited her on return to Austin in mid-1993, and except for an extended break in Austin from 2003 to mid-2005, her professional ex-pat postings were in Denver, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. Frank adapted like he had never had to before. He accepted more European invited speeches than ever before, in Vienna, Bavaria, England and France to be able to meet Rebecca for their traditional November anniversary trips. He adapted his lecture schedules and holidays to permit the two of them to enjoy an around-the-world trip to Asia with a stopover in Amsterdam, a Kenyan safari during the wildebeest migration, a tour of Egypt with a cruise on the Nile where he picked up souvenir art depicting the three-season calendar of ancient Egypt based on the Nile flood and dry periods, a visit to Turkey and a holiday in the Peruvian Andes to see Cuzco and Machu Picchu. He also took memorable speech and research solo trips to Morocco and Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1995. Family gatherings for Christmas in Austin and extended time together in Maine during the summer also helped maintain a cohesive family life, as did a three-generation family trip to Russia in 1998. Frank closed his lab in September 2001, ended his research grants and stopped taking new graduate students earlier than he intended, the better to manage an international family life. He presented a final plenary speech and submitted a final review paper on “Climate change and seasonal reproduction in mammals,” at a conference sponsored by The Zoological Society of London in 2009. Rebecca joined Frank for the London conference as the two planned the transition to an Austin-based future by the end of that year.

Frank retired from teaching and advising graduate students in 2013, with Emeritus status and an office on the UT campus being granted to permit him to continue his associations with Department faculty and his writing efforts.

Frank Bronson is survived by his wife of more than 43 years, Rebecca, his daughter Barbara Garza and her husband Rick, his son Steven and his wife Sandra, grandsons Sean, Michael, Adrian, James and Jonathan, nephews and nieces, and many Brockette cousins.

For those who wish, memorial contributions to a scholarship fund for the Dr. Franklin H. Bronson Medal awarded to an outstanding graduating senior at Barbara and Rick Garza’s school, AESA Prep Academy, may be made to AESA’s Academic Excellence Scholarship, a 501(c)(3) corporation, at 14101 Canonade, Austin, Texas 78737. For more information, email AESA at [email protected]

Addendum

Fred vom Saal

Without the experience of having Frank as my mentor, I would not have had the opportunity to acquire the insights I learned from him about how to do science that was truly innovative – the opposite of what he called “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and just following up on the ideas of others. That is not what Frank ever did. He was a brilliant, innovative biologist whose research had a big impact on numerous areas. This covered fetal sexual differentiation, the regulation of puberty, environmental impact on fertility and behavior, and studies of the decline in function with aging. All of this was done using different species as experimental models, but as was clear from his research support from the National Institutes of Health, Frank’s research had important public health implications.

Frank, you may be gone from this earth but not forgotten.

Paul Heideman

With his endlessly curious mind fascinated by big questions, Frank had the ability to bridge disciplines to develop ideas that inspired his students and helped direct his field of reproductive biology. Before I met Frank, I had thought there must be at least two FH Bronsons. I encountered the first FH Bronson as an insightful researcher and clear writer on the role of pheromones in fertility and behavior – a body of research that influenced me tremendously as a new graduate student exploring research directions. A second FHB was clearly an expert on puberty, briefly another potential research direction for me. The third was a ground-breaking thinker on seasonal reproduction. All three linked mechanistic questions of ‘how does that work?’ with insightful practical thinking ‘why and where does that matter?’ Of course, all three were Frank, grounded in his fascination with biological mechanisms, but always and only in contexts that are biologically meaningful. Frank was skilled at seeing connections and new avenues of research others hadn’t. He was intellectually unafraid to jump into a new research direction, always with enthusiasm and delight. In my own career, Frank’s literature review of mammalian seasonal breeding opened ideas and an avenue of research that I hadn’t realized was possible – the marriage of evolutionary ecology and neuroendocrine physiology. That shaped my entire career, just as Frank’s ideas influenced my scientific peers in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Frank was a direct, honest, and fundamentally kind mentor, loving the give and take of ideas and argument, and encouraging independent thinking. I vividly remember, in the early weeks of my post-doctoral fellowship in his lab, disagreeing with an argument Frank was making, but so intimidated by his reputation and expertise that I gave in, whereupon Frank abruptly abandoned his position, adopted mine, and left me attempting to defend his first view. Frank never cared about who was right, he just delighted in exchanging ideas and working collaboratively and logically through a problem. Frank cared deeply about others. He loved teaching, and I heard him many times discussing with undergraduate students his non-majors course, ‘Ecology, Evolution, and Society’, a science-based exposition on planet-wide sustainability. Frank developed a lab that felt to me like a family, also including us in events at his home with family. I saw Frank’s regular stress about maintaining financial support for his students, his lab technicians, and secretary – a wonderful group who supported his lab’s scientific rigor and shared Frank’s sense of fun. I am deeply grateful for what Frank gave to so many of us: demonstrating for us how to be rigorous, accurate, and careful in our science, modeling and teaching scientific communication skills, and being supportive, thoughtful, and present as a mentor.

Emilie Rissman

My additional thoughts about Frank are first that he was an exceptionally generous scientist. If you had an idea about something you wanted to pursue he was all for it. He was there for all the advice you wanted/asked for and was happy to support your scientific growth. Second, he was the best experimentalist I have ever known. And we was wise with a touch of midwestern humor. I often use his phrase with students to help them select problems to work on. “A second grader should be able to see the difference from 50 feet away” Translation you have to pick phenomenon to study that have large differences to start with otherwise you will not be able to pick apart the mechanisms. Third he was modest. Unlike other scientists who are ego-driven Frank was discovery driven. The studies and result were his satisfaction, not the “fame”. He rarely went to meetings or accepted invitations to give talks. He was not interested in the “glory” of academics, just the data. Finally, Frank a true gentleman to the women in his lab. Morevoer he treated me no differently than any of the male students. He was completely authentic and I will miss him for all these qualities.

Marie Kerbeshian

I am forever grateful that Frank opened his lab to me and, with much patience, guided me from student to scientist. He edited and re-edited and re-edited every draft of every scientific manuscript I wrote. He helped me understand how to identify and pursue innovative scientific questions that would impact the field. He took the time to prepare me for a career in an academic setting. I remember his story about a brand new faculty member attending their first department meeting and sitting in the chair usually occupied by one of the senior professors (and even now, when I am new to a group I am careful to select my own seat after others have done so). Most of all, I learned the lesson that science—and work in general--should be fun, with chair races down the hall and chili and tamales for Christmas lunch. To this day, one of my proudest moments was at a poster session when someone approached me and said, “Oh, are you the Kerbeshian of ‘Kerbeshian and Bronson’?” What an honor to have my name linked with his.

Glenn Perrigo

I had just finished my undergraduate degree and I fully expected to go to graduate school and enter a Ph.D. program. I had not been accepted in any graduate program by mid-July of 1980. All my cohort of friends were going to medical school or grad school and I was feeling terribly dejected. At 8:00 PM on a Wednesday evening I received a phone call that changed my life.

The call came from FH Bronson at The University of Texas. “That was a pretty gutsy form letter you sent to our graduate coordinator in Zoology.” In that letter, I admitted that I flunked out of SUNY Fredonia twice, but after sitting out for two years I came back to graduate with a 3.8 GPA at SUNY Brockport. I was now disciplined and wanted a chance in somebody’s lab. “I got D grades in Biology, so get yourself down here in late August and I’ll give you a chance with a research assistantship”. Four weeks later I packed up everything I owned in my pickup, left Upstate NY, and drove for 36-hours straight to Austin. I remember going through Forth Worth at midnight and it was still 98 degrees. What had I got myself into?

The next morning I walked into his basement laboratories in Patterson and my first introduction was a life-size photo of Frank plastered on his office door. As it turned out, he was really larger than life. Sure, I could go on-and-on about his keen intellect and ability to cut through the noise, asking the most salient questions and designing elegant and straightforward experiments, but let me share another personal note. Both my parents passed away during my first 18 months in grad school, so Frank was not only a patient and compassionate mentor, but I looked up to him for occasional fatherly advice.

That said, let me share two other indelible memories typical of Frank’s adventurous nature. We caught a cab in Tel Aviv one evening in 1991 and somehow ended up eating raw goat lungs and steamed sheep testicles for dinner (yum?). In 1994, Frank was with me and my students in the Amazon for my Neotropical Biology class. He enjoyed a lot of strange stuff there too, including Paca for dinner. Paca is a large forest-dwelling rodent.