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Introduction
Wilfred Bigelow
James Dauphinee
James Ferguson
Wilbur Franks
Brenda Gallie
Arthur Ham
Louis Jaques
Gordon Murray
William Mustard
Samuel Solomon
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Home » Hall of Fame » Wilbur Franks
- Colleague of Sir Frederick Banting and a senior researcher at the Banting Institute for over 30 years
- Inventor of the world's first anti-gravity suit for fighter pilots and the first high-speed human centrifuge, two innovations later used in the U.S. space program
Born 4 March 1901 in Weston, Ontario, the son of Mr and Mrs Joseph T. Franks.
Married fellow medical student (Sarah) Ruth MacLachlan in July 1925, and they had twin sons, William and Hugh, born in 1933. Ruth MacLachian Franks (1898--1962) graduated MB in 1926 and had an impressive career in psychiatry. Married secondly, in 1974, Janina Polanowska.
Died on 4 Jan. 1986 in Toronto's Sunnybrook Medical Centre at the age of 84.
BRF connections
Shortly after completing his medical studies (MB, Toronto, 1928), Wilbur Franks approached Sir Frederick Banting with "some ideas on cancer research" and "found Banting agreeable to letting him give them a try." Apart from his wartime service overseas, Franks spent his entire career with the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research (BBDMR), retiring in 1970 as Professor Emeritus. His work as a cancer researcher was funded in part through the Banting Foundation's annual grants to the department.
Career highlights
Franks's involvement in acceleration research began with the BBDMR's 1938 meeting with Major A. A. James on problems in aviation medicine. With the outbreak of war in 1939 he "turned his full attention to problems associated with acceleration in flying" and before the conflict ended had become "a world authority" on the subject.
The great challenge in the field of acceleration was to find a way of helping pilots remain conscious during highspeed manoeuvres. The centrifugal force created in making tight turns or pulling out of steep dives could amount to several times the force of gravity. At increased G, the blood "pools in the abdomen and legs," becoming too heavy for the heart to pump up to the the eyes and brain, and resulting in 'blackout' (loss of vision) at about five G, followed by unconsciousness at around six.
Franks had solved a similar problem in his cancer research when he found that test tubes which shattered when spun in a high speed centrifuge remained intact when floated in water. Wondering if the same principle could be applied to pilots, Franks experimented with mice in his small centrifuge and found that when "immersed in water up to their necks inside condoms" they could withstand forces far in excess of those that would kill unprotected animals. Franks next set about designing a suit based on this principle. His first prototype "allowed the entire body from neck to toes to be protected by a thin film of water." In early 1940, Franks flight-tested it personally in a Fleet Finch biplane:
"The suit had been cut to fit me perfectly, standing up. . . . In the airplane I was sitting down, and when the pressure hit I thought it was going to cut me in two. The idea became practical only when we realized that great areas of the body could be left outside the fluid system."
For his next model, Franks refined the design to minimize unnecessary body coverage, and on 2 June 1940, Wing Commander D'Arcy Greig of the RAF "became the first pilot ever to use a true anti-G suit."
Although these early tests proved the validity of the principle, it was apparent "that many modifications would be needed before a practical unit was forthcoming," and also that a safer and more controlled means of testing was necessary. As early as 1939 the basic design for a highspeed human centrifuge had been prepared by Franks and Mr George Meek of the Banting Institute, and early the following year Dr. Banting secured funding for the project from the National Research Council. Construction was carried out jointly by the Franks team, the university's departments of engineering and electrical engineering, and Victory Aircraft of Malton. The facility opened late in the summer of 1941 as part of the RCAF's No. I Clinical Investigation Unit.
The RCAF centrifuge was the first such installation on the Allied side and the fastest and most powerful in the world -- the first true high-speed human centrifuge (the Germans had built a "much smaller and less efficient unit" prior to the war). It was used to "develop the Mark HI F.F.S. (Franks Flying Suit), the first anti-G suit to be used in actual air operations anywhere in the world," introduced in November 1942 during the Battle of Oran in the Mediterranean.
By applying fluid pressure (water or compressed air) to the legs and abdomen, the FFS stopped blood from pooling in these areas while supporting them against centrifugal force. This support allowed the heart to pump sufficient blood to the head, "thus preventing the occurrence of blackouts and unconsciousness and delaying the onset of fatigue." By December 1944, when the suit's existence was first made public by the RCAF, its design had gone through "more than 250 modifications" and its manufacture was being supervised in England by Wing Commander Franks "and two of his medical co-workers, Sqdrn.-Ldr. Bram Rose and Sqdrn.-Ldr. Bill Kerr."
In January 1944, Britain awarded Franks the OBE for his work, which was credited with giving "the Allied forces a tremendous tactical advantage"and "saving the lives of thousands of Allied fighter pilots." Because these inventions were "freely shared by Canada with her allies," the pressure suits worn by "every air force pilot in the world, as well as astronauts and cosmonauts" are based on his original design. His human centrifuge was likewise the forerunner of the larger one built by the U.S. Navy (with the assistance of Franks and Professor D. N. Cass-Beggs of the Department of Electrical Engineering) and used in the training of astronauts.
Wilbur Franks was inducted into Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1984, but died "virtually unknown in the city where he worked" and without receiving official recognition from the Canadian government, a situation lamented by aviation historian Peter Allen. "I think that's part of the Canadian apathy. We're great at hiding our candles.
Franks's contributions to aviation research did not go unnoticed in the United States, however. In 1946 President Harry Truman awarded him the Legion of Merit. Two years later the Aerospace Medicine Association presented him with its Theodore C. Lyster Award, and in 1962 the same organization acknowledged his "outstanding research in aerospace medicine" with the Eric Liliencrantz Award -- a particularly apt tribute as the trophy was named after an American medical officer killed in an airborne acceleration experiment and is "modelled after John Glenn's spaceship, Friendship 7.
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