Frank Albert Cotton was an American chemist. He was the W.T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He authored over 1700 scientific articlesd. Cotton was recognized for his research on the chemistry of the transition metals. Frank Albert Cotton was born on April 9, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

His work emphasized both electronic structure and chemical synthesis. He pioneered the study of multiple bonding between transition metal atoms, starting with research on rhenium halides, and in 1964 identified the quadruple bond in the Re2Cl2?8 ion. His work soon focused on other metal-metal bonded species, elucidating the structure of chromium(II) acetate. He received the National Medal Of Science in 1982. Cotton was a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, and the corresponding academies in Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Denmark, as well as the American Philosophical Society. He received twenty-nine honorary doctorates. He died on February 20, 2007 (aged 76) in College Station, TX.