David French Boyd (October 5, 1834 – May 27, 1899) was an American teacher and educational administrator.

He served as the first head of Louisiana State University (LSU), where he was a professor of mathematics and moral philosophy.

There, he became a close friend of the institution's superintendent, William Tecumseh Sherman, who on the eve of the American Civil War famously warned Boyd, an enthusiastic secessionist, of the South's folly in pursuing a war with the North which it could not possibly win.

He was captured by Jayhawker militia and sold to the Union Army before being exchanged and returned to the South following Sherman's intervention.

After the end of the war in 1865, Boyd returned to the Seminary as superintendent and later wrote the charter that transformed the institution into Louisiana State University, based in Baton Rouge, under the terms of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act.