Frank den Hollander received his PhD at the University of Leiden in 1985, under the supervision of Piet Kasteleyn. After that he worked at the universities of Delft, Utrecht, Nijmegen and Eindhoven. From 2000 to 2005 he was scientific director of EURANDOM, a European research institute for Stochastics in Eindhoven. Since 2005 he is professor of probability theory at the University of Leiden.

Frank works in probability theory, statistical physics, ergodic theory, population genetics and complex networks. His main focus in these areas is on critical phenomena and disordered media. He received multiple national and international grants, including an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (2010-2014). He is one of the Principle Investigators of the Dutch Gravitation Program NETWORKS (2014-2024), a nationwide collaboration that combines stochastics and algorithmics to solve network problems, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education.

Frank was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 2005. In 2016 he became Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. In 2018 he received a Humboldt Research Award. He served on multiple national and international advisory boards. For 10 years he was chair of the Advisory Council for the Natural and Technical Sciences of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. He has given invited lectures around the world, and has co-organised many national and international workshops. He is the author of 186 research papers and 3 monographs. Since 1990 he has co-supervised 32 PhD students and 35 postdocs.