Frank Niall was the eldest of five brothers, two of whom joined him in the medical profession, one being a senior eye specialist and the other an orthopaedic specialist. Another of his brothers became a medical agent in Melbourne and he and Frank would have lunch together at the Wattle Cafe in Melbourne each day.

All the boys went to Xavier College. Frank left school in 1916 after having achieved honours in physics and chemistry and a top place in the leaving honours public examination. He was able to enter the second year of medicine immediately. After completing his medical course he was appointed a resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1920. After his year’s residency he settled in practice at Sandringham and later moved to Hampton where he built up a large and well-remembered practice.

In 1926 he married Mary Constance Gorman from Berrigan in New South Wales; two of her brothers were already doctors in the country areas of Victoria. Always scholastically inclined, Frank Niall, despite his busy practice, took the Doctorate of Medicine of Melbourne in 1927. He proceeded to England in 1928 and became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1929. He returned to Melbourne where he commenced consultant practice as a physician.

Frank Niall was the first boy from Xavier College to become a consulting physician in Melbourne. He was a foundation Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and a censor. He was appointed outpatient physician at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, in 1928, and in 1930 an indoor physician at Prince Henry’s Hospital. In 1936 he became acting indoor physician at St Vincent’s Hospital and a year later received his full appointment. He then resigned from the staff of Prince Henry’s Hospital and was appointed consultant physician there. He was also consultant physician to the Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. He was a very kind and considerate person, a great teacher, and a first-class physician with a particular interest in cardiac disease. He was also a university lecturer in medicine and an examiner for the Doctorate of Medicine as well as for the final examinations. He was appointed dean of his clinical school in 1944.

When he built his home in Studley Park Road, Kew in the 1930s he made sure that it had a tennis court, as the game of tennis was one of his great loves. For many years there would gather around the tennis court many of his renowned medical and non-medical friends, and the conversation was stimulating, as was the tennis.

Frank Niall was a great physician in the true sense of the word, and a great family man. Two of his six children followed him into medicine, John being a nephrologist at St Vincent’s Hospital and Hugh acquiring a world-wide reputation in medical research.