Frank M. Turner was a distinguished intellectual historian who forged his entire career at Yale, making a distinctive mark as scholar, teacher, mentor and senior administrator. He rose from being a teaching assistant in the History department to serving as Provost, the second-highest office in the University, from 1988 to 1992. In 1993 he became the John Hay Whitney Professor of History. In 2010 he was appointed Yale University Librarian, overseeing one of the largest academic library systems in the world: 18 libraries and special collections of primary source material. Turner had been director of one of those units, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, from 2003. He died only two months into his five-year term.