Frank Drake

Frank Drake (born May 28 1930) is an American astronomer and astrophysicist.

Drake was born in Chicago. In 1961, along with J. Peter Pearman, an officer on the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences, he organized the first SETI conference held at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. At this small gathering of a dozen scientists he proposed his famous Drake equation, which he devised in an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy with which we might come in contact.

Drake is a member of the National Academy of Sciences where he chaired the Board of Physics and Astronomy of the National Research Council (1989-92). He also served as President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He was a Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University (1964-84) and served as the Director of the Arecibo Observatory.

He is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz where he also served as Dean of Natural Sciences (1984-88).