Colby, Frank Gerhardt, Ph.D.
(RJR R&D Research Director) R.J. Reynolds scientist. He was employed by RJR as head of then-to-be-founded Scientific Library and Information Division in 1951, Manager of Scientific Information Division 1965-1979, Associate Director of Scientific Information in 1980, and employed by Jacob Medinger & Finnegan as Chief Scientist in 1983.Frank Gerhardt Colby
Biographical Information:
Frank G. Colby was born Frank G. Cohn in Mulhausen, Germany, on April 10, 1915. The son of Fritz Cohn and the former Paula Oppenheimer, he began college in Nancy, France, in 1934, but financial reasons soon caused him to switch to the University of Geneva. There he studied organic chemistry, earning a master's degree in 1939 and a doctorate in 1941, after completing a thesis on the synthesis of certain organic compounds that are related to ionones. With World War II now at its height, he fled to Cuba by way of France and Spain. He arrived in Havana in the fall of 1941 and spent the next five years doing occasional consultant work but, in his own words, most of the time was spent "sitting in a rocking chair and rocking back and forth."
He moved to the United States in the fall of 1946 and assumed the name of Colby. He took a job as a research chemist for the Industrial Tape Corporation, a New Brunswick, New Jersey-based subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. He was "bored to tears by mixing adhesives" and soon moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, to run the information service library of the Commercial Solvents Corporation. He had no previous library experience, but as he later explained, "I have what is called a scholarly temperament" and the position suited him. He stayed there until 1951, when he took a similar position at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco.
Frank Colby remained at R. J. Reynolds for thirty-two years until his retirement in 1983. According to Colby, his title changed several times during that period but his basic job description never changed – he was always responsible for keeping up with scientific literature relative to the company's products and research. But of course the scope of his position changed dramatically as the size of the company's research library multiplied many times over and new findings about the health risks of smoking posed an increasing threat to the industry.
Colby also became known as a strident industry partisan. A performance evaluation from the 1980s listed his first job duty as being to, "Provide information and related services to combat anti-tobacco claims in the smoking-health area and to deal with regulatory problems." He took the word "combat" very seriously and made unabashed declarations about the need to protect the company from such enemies as the American Medical Association, the Surgeon General, the Food and Drug Administration, and even the PTA. He stated under oath in the Minnesota case that he did not believe that "a single American [had] ever died from lung cancer or emphysema caused by smoking cigarettes" and that studies that found otherwise were based on a "false premise." Colby even asserted that "there is simply no place in the cigarette industry for someone who believes that smoking causes cancer … any person in the cigarette industry who agreed that smoking caused cancer should quit their job and move to some other industry."
True to his beliefs, Colby has been a smoker since adolescence and sees no reason to try to quit. He claims to have stopped on only two occasions – once in the 1930s when he was training to swim the English Channel and his coach advised him to stop smoking, and again while in Cuba because he could not afford the habit.
Frank G. Colby retired in June of 1983 after thirty-two years with R. J. Reynolds. For several years after that, he worked as a consultant for the industry law firm of Jacob, Medinger & Finnegan. In 1995, his wife of forty-two years passed away. Though in 2010 he would be well past ninety, there is no record of his death and is presumed still alive.
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Frank G. Colby to R. A. Blevins Jr, "Cigarette Concept to Assure RJR a Larger Segment of the Youth Market," December 4, 1973, Bates no. 500529772-9773, http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/5005 29772-9773.html.
"Deposition of FRANK GERHARDT COLBY, Ph.D., April 13, 1983, REYNOLDS LEASING CORP. v. PHILIP MORRIS INC." 13 Apr 1983.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/COLBYF041383.html.
"Deposition of FRANK GERHARDT COLBY, Ph.D., February 1, 1985, BARNES v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO." 01 Feb 1985
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/COLBYF020185.html.
"Deposition of FRANK GERHARDT COLBY, Ph.D., December 17, 1997, MINNESOTA v. PHILIP MORRIS INC.". 17 Dec 1997
http://tobaccodocuments.org/datta/COLBYF121797.html.
"Frank Gerhardt Colby." Marquis Who's Who TM. Marquis Who's Who, 2006.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
"Performance Evaluation. Frank G. Colby." Bates: 520953263-520953279
http://tobaccodocuments.org/new_rjr/520953263-3279.html.
Synonyms
Colby, Frank G.*Colby, Charles G.