James Bruce French (1921–2002) was a Canadian and American theoretical physicist, specializing in nuclear physics.
J. Bruce French received in 1942 his bachelor's degree in physics from Dalhousie University and served during WWII in the Royal Canadian Navy, performing acoustical studies related to antisubmarine warfare.
He did pioneering research on deuteron stripping (direct reactions), the nuclear shell model,[1] and statistical spectroscopy.
[2] He and his student Malcolm H. Macfarlane (1933–2008) published in 1960 the extensive review article Stripping reactions and the structure of light and intermediate nuclei,[4] which has been cited over 700 times.
Through these methods, he derived sum rules and particle–hole relations, which he could use to connect seemingly disparate spectroscopic data.