Bernard Chazelle (born November 5, 1955) is a French computer scientist.

Much of his work is in computational geometry, where he is known for his study of algorithms, such as linear-time triangulation[2] of a simple polygon, as well as major complexity results, such as lower bound techniques based on discrepancy theory.

[3] He is also known for his invention of the soft heap data structure and the most asymptotically efficient known deterministic algorithm for finding minimum spanning trees.

[citation needed] He grew up in Paris, France, where he received his bachelor's degree and master's degree in applied mathematics at the École des mines de Paris in 1977.

Then, at the age of 21, he attended Yale University in the United States, where he received his PhD in computer science in 1980 under the supervision of David P.