Anthony French

Who is Anthony French?

Anthony Philip French is an emeritus professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was born in Brighton, England.

French is a graduate of Cambridge University, receiving his B.A. in 1942 and Ph. D. in 1948, both in physics. In 1942, he began working on the British effort to build an atomic bomb at the Cavendish Laboratory. By 1944, Tube Alloys had been merged with the American Manhattan Project and he was sent to Los Alamos.

When the War ended, he returned to the UK, where he spent a couple of years at the newly formed Atomic Energy Research Establishment. He later joined the faculty at Cambridge, where he conducted his research at Cavendish and became a Fellow and Director of Studies in Natural Sciences at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

In 1955, French arrived at the University of South Carolina, where he was made chairman of the physics department. He left South Carolina in 1962 to take a faculty position in the MIT Physics Department, where he has been ever since.

French's main interest is undergraduate physics education.