Frank Hansman was educated at Fort Street Boys’ High School and Sydney University. As a senior resident medical officer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital he conceived an interest in biochemistry, which was to become a lifelong passion.

In the days before the momentous technical advances in laboratory equipment, biochemistry consisted of slow, painstaking, hand-done procedures where accuracy and integrity were essential. Frank Hansman possessed these qualities together with a lively imagination and he never outgrew the urge to improve methods - and people! As most intending specialists did, Frank Hansman went abroad after completing his hospital training. He worked at the Lister Institute and St Thomas’ Hospital in London. On his return to Sydney he went into partnership with Arthur Tebbutt in a Macquarie Street private practice. He was to keep his hospital associations as honorary director of the department of pathology at the Women’s Hospital (Crown Street), honorary medical officer to the department of biochemistry at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and during the War, as honorary major, visiting specialist to the 113 AGH at Concord, Sydney.

He was the representative of the AMA council on the Standards Association of Australia. Indeed, it was his highly developed critical faculty that led to his own standards being so unrelentingly high that they resulted at times in contention with the less rigorous - contention not lessened by the fact that he was almost invariably right. However Frank Hansman’s ability to laugh at himself and his unbounded generosity both materially and intellectually quickly healed any wounds.

As the Federal AMA representative on the Australian Road Safety Council Dr Hansman became involved in public argument about ways and means of lowering the road toll. That, in face of much resistance and criticism, blood alcohol measurement and the breathalyser were finally introduced in NSW in 1968 was in large measure due to his efforts.

Before the last War thyroid activity was only assessed indirectly through the basal metabolic rate, estimated by gas analysis of expired air. On two or three mornings a week before 8 a.m. Frank Hansman and his friend and colleague Emily Day (another foundation Fellow of the RACP) were to be found in an old abandoned theatre above the stairs to A3 ward at Royal Prince Alfred amidst a vast array of burettes and other glass equipment with rubber bungs and tubing and huge bags into which the patients had been persuaded to breathe - a frightening test for both patients and doctors. About this time several papers of his on blood calcium and phosphorus estimations and their relationship to the parathyroid gland were published. They still make interesting reading.

In Sydney the name Hansman was always associated with the famous Hansman shoes, a name which meant quality. Frank was a director of the firm and occasionally made a gift of these shoes to his colleagues, as he did also to his technical assistant Frank Hebbard when the latter went to the War with Edgar Thomson FRACP FRCPA, pathologist to 2/5 AGH. A small vital man, ever busy, ever intransigent, always concerned for others, he is remembered with affection and respect.