Patrick Prosser (born 8 September 1952) is a computer scientist who spent the bulk of his career at the University of Glasgow.

His research has centred on constraint programming, although it has extended into the application of those techniques into other areas.

[2] His most notable contribution is his invention of conflict-directed backjumping, an advanced technique for reducing search in constraint problems by avoiding unnecessary work on backtracking.

[4] Other areas of constraint programming he has researched include the identification of hard problems[5] and techniques for solving vehicle routing problems.

[6] His interest in applications of constraint programming has included (for example) how it can be used in computing species trees.