Emeritus Professor French is a Clinical Immunologist (retired from medical practice) who graduated from the University of Sheffield in 1973 and undertook postgraduate training in Sheffield and Perth. He has a particular interest in infection and immunity, including primary and secondary immunodeficiency disorders, HIV Medicine and the immunology of lymphotropic virus and mycobacterial disease.

Since 1986 he has contributed to the development of teaching, research and clinical and laboratory practice in Clinical Immunology at UWA, Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) and PathWest Laboratory Medicine. In particular, he took a leading role in developing clinical services for adults with immunodeficiency disorders and HIV infection at RPH, establishing that hospital as the state referral centre for HIV medicine, and in developing clinical laboratory tests related to infection and immunity. 

Professor French previously undertook a leading role in national and international clinical trials of therapies for HIV infection and disease from their first availabilty in the late 1980s. He served on the Commonwealth Government HIV Clinical Trials and Treatments Advisory Committee (1990-99; deputy Chair 1992-96) and on the Immune-based Therapies Working Group (1992-2002; Chair 1992-98) and Antiretroviral Therapy Working Group (2004-11; Chair 2008-11) of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (now Kirby Institute). He was also a member of the International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (2003-16).

He supervised, or contributed to, numerous research studies on the immunology of HIV disease in Australia and overseas (Cambodia, India, Malaysia, South Africa and USA), particularly immune reconstitution disorders and persistent immune activation in HIV patients treated with antiretroviral therapy. He first described the immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) in the 1990s and has contributed to advances in knowledge about this condition ever since. He was a founder member of the International Network for the Study of HIV-associated IRIS (INSHI), which produced international guidelines for the diagnosis and management of tuberculosis-associated IRIS and cryptococcosis-associated IRIS. He was also a coauthor of the first medical textbook chapters to be wriiten about this condition in several editions of Goldman's Cecil Medicine and Infectious Diseases.  

For more than 40 years, Professor French has also undertaken research on antibody/B cell dysfunction in primary antibody deficiency disorders, HIV infection, including antibody-mediated control of HIV, and multiple sclerosis. He was a member of the Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases Working Group of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA; 1990-2000) and the Medical and Research Advisory Board of Multiple Sclerosis, Australia (2002-7). He currently contributes to research studies on Epstein-Barr virus infection and B cell dysfunction in people with multiple sclerosis. 

Professor French was a founder member of ASCIA and the Australsian Society for HIV Medicine (ASHM; now known as the Australasian Society for HIV Medicine, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine), of which he is an honorary lifetime member. He has served on the editorial advisory boards of AIDS, Clinical Immunology, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Journal of AIDS and Frontiers in Immunology, and reviewed several hundred manuscripts submitted for publication in these and many other journals. He was the honorary editor of the ASHM website HIV Management in Australasia (2016-2024) and is currently Chair of the Bloodborne Virus and Sexually Transmissible Infections Advisory Committee of the Health Department of Western Australia.