David Stronach

David Brian Stronach (10 June 1931 – 27 June 2020) was a Scottish archaeologist of ancient Iran and Iraq who became an expert on the city of Pasargadae and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in June 1931, Stronach was the son of Ian David Stronach FRCSE and his wife Marjorie Jessie Duncan Minto, and was educated at Gordonstoun School and St John's College, Cambridge, from which he graduated Master of Arts in 1958.

From 1961 to 1963, Stronach directed the British Institute of Persian Studies' excavations at Pasargadae, where Iranian archaeologist Parvin Barzin joined the expedition as the official representative of Iran's Archaeological Department. In the 1990s, he excavated several parts of Nineveh. His scholarship earned him several honours and awards, including the invitation to deliver endowed lectures at Harvard and Columbia.

During his time in Iran, he met Ruth Vaadia (1937–2017), an Israeli archaeologist who was also working in Iran, and married her in 1966. The family left at the time of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. and retired in 2004.

Honours Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 1975 Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London Archaeological Institute of America Gold Medal for "Distinguished Archaeological Achievement", 2004