Andre Gunder Frank
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Andre Gunder Frank (Berlin, February 24, 1929 – Luxembourg, April 23, 2005) was a German economic historian and sociologist who was one of the founders of the Dependency theory in the 1960s.
Frank was born in Germany, but his family fled the country when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor. Frank received schooling in several places in Switzerland, where his family settled, until they emigrated to the United States in 1941. Frank was educated at the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1957 after writing a dissertation on Soviet agriculture entitled Growth and Productivity in Ukranian Agriculture from 1928 to 1955. Ironically, his dissertation supervisor was Milton Friedman, a man whose laissez faire approach to economics Frank would thoroughly criticize in the future.
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s Frank taught at American universities. In 1962 he moved to Latin America, inaugurating a remarkable period of travel that served to confirm his peripatetic tendencies. His most notable work during this time was his stint as Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of Chile, where he was involved in reforms under the government of Salvador Allende government. After Allende's regime was toppled by a coup d'état in 1973 Frank fled to Europe, where he continued to take up a series of positions. In 1994 he retired as emeritus professor at the University of Amsterdam.
During his career, Frank taught and did research in departments of anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, political science, and sociology, in nine universities in North America, three in Latin America, and five in Europe. He gave countless lectures and seminars at dozens of universities and other institutions all around the world in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch. Frank wrote widely on the economic, social and political history and contemporary development of the world system, the industrially developed countries, and especially of the Third World and Latin America. He produced over 1,000 publications in 30 languages. His later work focused on the analysis of the crisis in world economy and on global world history.
He was married to Marta Fuentes, with whom he wrote several studies about social movements, and they have two sons. Marta died in Amsterdam in June 1993. Frank died in 2005 of cancer.
Works and Ideas
Frank was a prolific author who published widely on issues of economics and economic history. One of his most important early works is Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America while in his later career he produced works such as ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age and (with Barry Gills) The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand.