Frank Bradway Rogers

Frank Bradway Rogers (December 31, 1914 – July 27, 1987) was an American medical doctor and librarian who was instrumental in changing the Army Medical Library into the National Library of Medicine.

Early life and education Rogers was born in Norwood, Ohio to Frank Shane and Nettie Bradway Rogers, a postal worker and a homemaker. He grew up in the Cincinnati area with siblings Ralph, Wayne and Eleanor, and attended the schools there. Upon graduation from the Walnut Hills High School in 1932, he was fortunate to acquire a scholarship to attend Yale University as a premed student. He spent four years at Yale, during which time he occupied himself with writing for the newspaper on campus, participating in amateur drama performances and working with the student government. He also worked as a waiter to help sustain him financially.

Work Newsweek magazine hired him to work as an “office boy” and obtained a Medical Doctor degree in 1942. During his time at Ohio State, he joined the “Reserved Officer Training Corps.” was trying to solve. He made several recommendations to the Surgeon General including hiring a “qualified professional librarian” Automatic rotation involved an old law that “prohibited regular military officers from staying in Washington for more than four years.” The goal of the bill was “to promote the progress of medicine and to advance the national health and welfare.” It also included combining the AML, Navy medical libraries, Air Force medical libraries, and the Public Health Service into one system.

He retired from NLM in 1963 and went to work for the University of Colorado Medical Center. Rogers wrote many articles, reviews, reports, books and among them the book “Selected Papers.” This book was about the life of John Shaw Billings, in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the AML (1965). Rogers wrote that, “Billings was born on April 12, 1838, son of James and Abby Shaw Billings, in Cotton Township, Switzerland County, Indiana. He served as the director of the library during the last years of the nineteenth century. “ He admired Billings and thought that he was one of the best men in the medical field. He remarked that “Billings was a brilliant innovator and a prolific writer, dedicated to the advancement of the Medical Library as an indispensable instrument of the medical profession.”