Roger Kenneth French

Roger Kenneth French (12 April 1938 – 14 May 2002) was an English medical historian, specialising in medieval and Renaissance medical history. He was one of the world's leading experts on the anatomical work of William Harvey.

Biography Roger French was born in Coventry, where his parents ran a butchering and cold-storage business. After attending the King Henry VIII School, Coventry, he matriculated at St Catherine's College, Oxford. There he graduated with a bachelor's degree in zoology,

As director of the Wellcome Unit of Cambridge University, French worked with several colleagues, including Andrew Cunningham, Andrew William Wear, (1936–2000), Iain M. Lonie, Johanna Geyer-Kordesch, and Frank Greenaway, to organise a number of symposia and conferences on various topics in the history of medicine. The results were published in many volumes, including The medical renaissance of the sixteenth century (Cambridge University Press, 1985), Science in the early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his sources and his influence (London, Croom Helm, 1986), The medical revolution of the seventeenth century (Cambridge University Press, 1989), The medical enlightenment of the eighteenth century (Cambridge University Press, 1990), Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease (Ashgate Publishing, 1998). During French's directorship, the Wellcome Unit flourished in productivity. French was a member of the editorial board of the journal Medical History.

Roger and Patricia Anne French married on 13 August 1966. From their 35-year marriage, there were two daughters and a son.