Pulitzer Prize Recipient. Artist. He was a Russian-born American artist, who created the famous 1947 murals "The Age of Reptiles" and "The Age of Mammals" for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. The "Age of Reptiles" measures 110 feet long and took four-and one-half years to create. In 1953 he was commissioned to paint a 10-by-24-foot mural for the Museum of History and Industry, depicting the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. His 1965 "March of Progress" shows the evolution of man, from ape to human. He illustrated Willy Ley's book, "Worlds of the Past," which was published in 1971. His story of the settling of Connecticut in a mural is on display at the Hartford Public Library since 1986. As an unknown artist, he received recognition with the Pulitzer Award for Painting in 1949. Frank, as he was called, did numerous illustrations for "Life" magazine, which led to his work being more recognized. When he was five years old, his family immigrated from Russia to Seattle, Washington in 1924. In 1938, he received a scholarship at Yale University, graduating in 1942 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and in 1971 he received his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University. In 1980 he received his Doctorate of Fine Arts from University of New Haven. Between being a freelance artist, often creating oil-on-canvas paintings of flowers, he taught art at Yale University from 1942 to 1950, was the artist-in-residence for three years at what is now the Art Institute of Seattle and from 1961 to his death, he held a position at the University of Hartford. Beside his Pulitzer Prize, he received the James E. and Frances W. Bent Award from University of Hartford; an honorable mention for the Prix-de-Rome in 1941 and in 1980 from the Peabody Museum, the Addison Emery Verrill Medal for "outstanding contributions to the field of natural history." He married Jean Farquharson Day, an artist and children's book illustrator. The couple had a son and two daughters.