Linda May French was an American astronomer specializing in the physical properties ofasteroids andcomets, including their shapes and surfaces.[1] She was also interested inastronomy education[2] and in thehistory of astronomy, particularly focusing on the life ofJohn Goodricke, an 18th-century deaf British amateur astronomer.[3] She was a professor emerita of physics atIllinois Wesleyan University.[1]
French was originally fromHagerstown, Indiana,[4] and first made plans for becoming an astronomer at age five, after being given a children's book on astronomy. But as a student atIndiana University, she went through English and education majors before returning to astronomy after taking a junior-year general education course in the subject.[5] She graduated from Indiana University in 1973, with an A.B. in astronomy and a minor in physics.[6] She then went toCornell University for graduate study in astronomy, where she worked as a teaching assistant forCarl Sagan,[5] earned a master's degree in 1977, and completed her Ph.D. in 1980.[6]
After a one-year visiting assistant professorship atBates College, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology from 1982 to 1988, a researcher at theAir Force Geophysics Laboratory atHanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts from 1988 to 1989, and a pre-secondary science teacher atThe Park School inBrookline, Massachusetts from 1989 to 1992, before returning to academia as an associate professor of physics atWheelock College in Boston in 1992. She moved to Illinois Wesleyan University in 2002, and was promoted to full professor in 2008.[6]
She was a program director at theNational Science Foundation for a three-year term beginning circa 2017.[4]
She died on November 9, 2025 in New Hampshire.[7]
Asteroid3506 French was named after French in 1988.[2] In 2016, Illinois Wesleyan University gave her their highest teaching award, the Kemp Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence.[5][8] French was named a Legacy Fellow of theAmerican Astronomical Society in 2020.[4][9]
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