David French

French was born on 30 May 1933 in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Having received a free place as a direct grant pupil, he was educated at Pocklington School, a private school in Pocklington. He studied classics at St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

French was the fourth director of the British Institute at Ankara (1968-1994). After he was appointed to this position, he continued his previous work on Can Hasan 1, providing an overview of the Chalcolithic period in the region and determining the transitional sequences from the Neolithic period.

Among many projects, salvage excavations at Aşvan Kale and Tille Höyük stand out.

In the field of epigraphy, French initiated a major project: the investigation of Asia Minor milestones, resulting in mapping of the ancient routes in Anatolia. The project took many years of fieldwork; French managed to record milestones and related inscriptions in all the Roman provinces of Anatolia west of the Euphrates. French published his first monograph on this project in 1981 and a two-volume preliminary catalogue in 1988.

He made significant contributions to the institute's scientific output until his death. Its library is now the David H. French Library.

David French: A Life in Anatolian Archaeology was published in 2020.

French was married to Elizabeth French (née Wace), a noted archaeologist of Mycenaean Greece, between the years 1959 and 1975. They had two daughters.