FREOPP Leadership: Frank Laukien
The man advancing a leading scientific instrument technology is also an instrumental leader of FREOPP.
Frank Laukien will tell you that he’s the son of a high school teacher and a university professor. What he might not tell you is that the professor was a physicist named Gunther Laukien, a pioneer in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy — one of the most important technologies in modern biochemistry — and founder in 1960 of the Bruker Corporation, which he and Frank have grown into one of the largest life sciences instrumentation companies in the world.
Frank, along with his four brothers, was born and raised in Stuttgart, Germany, the city where Porsche and Mercedes-Benz were born, among other German industrial legends. Frank excelled as both a scholar and an athlete, achieving the best GPA in his high school’s history, and recording the highest-ever score in the German armed forces paratrooper junior officer’s course since the inception of its airborne division.
Frank’s next leap took him to the United States — a place he had always wanted to go. He went to college at MIT, where he majored in physics and also took courses in economics and accounting. He spent his summers working for Bruker and became involved with both the business and the research of Bruker’s analytical instrumentation business.
“My passion for instrumentation was actually sparked by my senior undergraduate thesis on the potential benefits of cryogenic nuclear magnetic resonance probes,” Frank later recalled in an interview. “In 1992, I started a research and development project focused on NMR cryoprobes at Bruker, a program that has helped to revolutionize NMR technology, and greatly increased its sensitivity for structural biology. It took about five years to bring the first commercial NMR cryoprobe product to market, but it was one of those leading-edge technology gambles that we take from time to time at Bruker. I had no idea in 1984 when I handed in my senior thesis that this technology would eventually have such a profound impact on the NMR field.”
The gamble paid off. Frank went on to obtain a Ph.D. in chemical physics at Harvard, while starting and leading new departments and business lines at Bruker. “After completing my Ph.D. at Harvard, I knew it was unlikely that I would be a science professor because I was equally focused on the science as well as on the fascinating business side of the industry,” Frank reflects. “As a scientist, I really enjoy the product development emphasis on market-driven solutions for customers, where we try to find solutions to fit their needs in a real-time one-on-one marketing approach. I learned that aspect of the business by working in marketing, sales, and finance as my first real job after graduating.”
Frank eventually rose to the helm of Bruker in 1991, and took the company public in 2000. Its market capitalization now exceeds $10 billion.
Frank’s interests are remarkably diverse. He recently published a book about the field of active biological evolution, which posits that evolutionary processes are of great significance in modern medicine, especially in oncology. He’s an angel investor in start-up companies in biotherapeutics and space exploration, and the executive chairman of Gauss Fusion GmbH, a startup seeking to lead the commercialization of nuclear fusion.
“Growing up in Germany and then coming to MIT as a physics undergrad and being in the U.S. since then gave me an appreciation for two different cultures. I’ve always thought of the U.S. as more entrepreneurial: as the land of opportunity, equality, and freedom, although some of that is now being threatened by an ever more powerful administrative state, with excessive regulation and examples of governmental overreach and by a stifling intellectual environment. We want our kids and all kids in America to have the same opportunities and the same degree of personal, economic and intellectual freedom, and the freedom of expression that we’ve had.”
Frank joined FREOPP’s Board of Directors in 2021. “I believe the path to greater prosperity, opportunity and personal freedom is via the policies and philosophy that FREOPP is advocating for, supported by scholarly excellence in research,” says Frank. “Offering more opportunities for those on the bottom half of the ladder via freedom of opportunity, education, less regulation, and investment in medical and scientific research, with limited government and focus on freedom of speech, non-discrimination, and freedom to prosper make me passionate about serving on the Board of FREOPP. I am very proud of the leadership of Avik, and of the accomplishments and voices of our other FREOPP board members.”
Frank lives in New England with his wife, Vermont native Tamra Laukien. Between them they have “six wonderful kids” ages 9 to 32, and a Weimaraner named Oakley.
