Frank Mayo was appointed a scientific fellow at SRI in mid-1956, following an almost 30-year career at the University of Chicago, Du Pont, U.S. Rubber Company, and GE. He was already an internationally recognized organic chemist and one of the pioneers in free radical chemistry, an area of chemistry of great importance for the chemical industry.
Frank wasted little time once at SRI in securing funding, by persuading the chemical industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan of the major benefits of a multisponsored, basic research program on oxidation of organic compounds. In sharing support of basic studies, chemical companies could access the results early and use them in proprietary applications in their own laboratories. Mayo also secured government funds for selected studies of oxidation, and the results were shared with the commercial sponsors, thereby enhancing the value of joining the Oxidation Program. Mayo's Oxidation Program was one of the largest and most successful multi- client programs in the sciences, then or now.
These programs continued for almost 15 years, produced significant scientific advances, and gave SRI great visibility in oxidation research. Mayo's reputation attracted to SRI many well-known or later-to-be well-known chemists, including Sid Benson, Dave Golden, Dale Hendry, Ted Mill, Dave Allara, Dick Hiatt, Dale Van Sickle, and Kurt Egger. From their work, new oxidation arenas evolved, such as smog studies, the environmental fate of chemicals, and oxidation in biological systems.
Frank's gifts were his attention to the scientific details of complex chemistry, a keen understanding how basic research can affect a company's business, and his impressive powers of persuasion with corporate vice presidents and lab directors.
Frank changed direction in the 1970s and 1980s to focus on coal chemistry and fuel oxidation with DOE and Army support and to run for national office in the American Chemical Society, where he did not get very far, probably because he ran on a populist agenda and was sometimes blunt in his assessment of others. Frank died with his boots still on in the fall of 1987 at 79 while attending a scientific meeting in the East.