Linda May French is an American astronomer specializing in the physical properties of asteroids and comets, including their shapes and surfaces.
[1] French is originally from Hagerstown, Indiana,[4] and first made plans for becoming an astronomer at age five, after being given a children's book on astronomy.
[6] She then went to Cornell University for graduate study in astronomy, where she worked as a teaching assistant for Carl Sagan,[5] earned a master's degree in 1977, and completed her Ph.D. in 1980.
[6] After a one-year visiting assistant professorship at Bates College, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1982 to 1988, a researcher at the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts from 1988 to 1989, and a pre-secondary science teacher at The Park School in Brookline, Massachusetts from 1989 to 1992, before returning to academia as an associate professor of physics at Wheelock College in Boston in 1992.
[6] She was a program director at the National Science Foundation for a three-year term beginning circa 2017.