He was a famous Etruscan expert and a had a deep knowledge of the ancient Ischia, a long term collaborator of Georg Buchner, the discoverer of Pithekousai. David Ridgway was born in Athens on 11th of May 1938. After his degree in Classical Literature at the University College of London in 1960, he attended a post-university specialisation course about the European and Mediterranean Archaeology in Oxford.

In 1964, for 12the first time, he participated to an archaeological research in Italy with the University of Pennsylvania. He was looking for the Greek colony of Sybaris, in Calabria. On that occasion, he met a young Etruscan expert, Francesca Romana Serra. A strong union of work and life was born between the two, who got married in 1970.

From 1968, Ridgway started to teach at the University of Edinburgh, first as a professor of archaeology and then as a reader for the Archaeology department and secondly, for Classical studies. In the same department, Francesca Romana Serra was teaching Archaeology and classical Art too. She was simultaneously continuing her research about the Etruscan art and she dedicated herself to the publication of the studies about the archaeological excavations. At the end of the sixties, Ridgway got in touch with the archaeologist Georg Buchner, who asked him to collaborate on the publication of the results of the excavations done by him in the necropolis of Pithekousai, in San Montano, in 1952-1961. It was about the enormous amount of remains rediscovered in the 723 tombs from VIII, VII and VI century b.C and the ones in the 131 sepulchres of most recent time, from V century to Roman times. Ridgway accepted and Buchner gave to Francesca Romana Serra the publication rights of the Pithecousai materials as a wedding present. Among which, pieces of extraordinary scientific value such as the Nestor Cup and the Crater of Shipwreck. Serra translated the ceramic magazine, edited by her husband.

The Ridgway worked on the publication about Pithekousai for several consecutive summers spent in Ischia.  The text of Pithekoussai I was completed in 1979, but due to its publication as a monography in the series “Ancient Monuments” of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Lincean Academy) it has to wait until 1993. In the meantime, nine years before, Ridgway dedicated to Pithekousai the book, which told the discovery to the public of non-professionals, L’alba della Magna Grecia. In 1992 even The First Western Greeks came out in England and in the French, Greek and Spanish Editions. During these years, the name of Ridgway was associated with Buchner one and its discovery of Pithekousai. Likely to remain one of the pillars of the British archaeologist work with his studies about the metallic remains of nuragic age in Sardinia, to which he dedicated several publications. He was not present during the inauguration of the Archaeological Museum of Pithekousai at Villa Arbusto in April 1999.

Associated with his wife for several British and Interntional scientific institutions, Ridgway stopped teaching in 2003. A publication dating from 2006, with which about fifty researchers wanted to pay homage to the Ridgway spouses: Oltre frontiera: Etruschi, Greci, Fenici e Ciprioti. Studi in onore di David Ridgway e di Francesca Romana Serra. In 2008, the loss of his wife marked the end of a fructuous scientific relationship, as well as personal. In 2010, on the occasion of the decade of the Museum of Pithecousai inauguration, he sent a useful contribution on Pithekoussai and the Etruscan world. Ridgway died in Athens on 20th of May 2012.