Jacques Pitrat (born in Feb. 1934, died in Oct. 2019) was one of the French symbolic artificial intelligence pioneers.
Graduated from École Polytechnique, and member of the Corps de l'armement, he began his career at the Laboratoire Central de l'Armement (French equivalent of DARPA) from 1959 to 1967.
In 1966 he defended his Habilitation thesis (Doctorat d'État) about a theorem proving software using meta-theorems.
He worked at the CNRS from 1967 till his retirement, ending his career as emeritus research director at the end of 2015.
He taught artificial intelligence at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris from 1967 till 1998.