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Anthony Philip French
Born	1920 Brighton, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Cambridge
Scientific career
Fields	Physics Education
Institutions	Manhattan Project Cambridge South Carolina MIT
Website

Anthony Philip French (born in 1920 in Brighton, England) is an emeritus professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof. 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 (codenamed Tube Alloys) 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 Natural Studies at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

In 1955, Prof. 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 at MIT, where he has been ever since.

Prof. French's main interest is undergraduate physics education. He was chairman of the Commission on Physics Education of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (1975-1981) and president of the American Association of Physics Teachers (1985-1986). He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Books

• French, A.P. (1978). Introduction to Quantum Physics. W.W. Norton & Company.

• French, A.P. (1971). Newtonian Mechanics. W.W. Norton & Company.

• French, A.P. (1968). Special Relativity. W.W. Norton & Company.

• French, A.P. (1971). Vibrations and Waves. W.W. Norton & Company.

Awards and honors

• 1980 University Medal of the Charles University, Prague
• 1988 Bragg Medal of the Institute of Physics, London
• 1989 Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers
• 1991 Named Professor Emeritus at MIT
• 1993 Melba Newell Phillips Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers

See also

• MIT Physics Department

External links

• Anthony French's website at MIT

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