| Jean Berstel | |
| Birth Place: | Nîmes, France |
| Field: | Combinatorics on words Formal language theory |
| Work Institution: | University of Marne-la-Vallée Pierre and Marie Curie University |
| Alma Mater: | Paris Diderot University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Marcel-Paul Schützenberger |
Jean Berstel (born 1941) is a French mathematician and theoretical computer scientist known for his contributions to combinatorics on words and formal language theory. He is a currently a professor emeritus at the University of Marne-la-Vallée.
Berstel earned his doctorate (doctorat d'État) at Paris Diderot University in 1973. In 1973–1995 he was a professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University, and in 1995–2005 a professor at the University of Marne-la-Vallée, where he has been a professor emeritus since 2005.
In 2006, Berstel was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Turku, Finland. A festschrift in his honour was published in 2003 as a special issue of Theoretical Computer Science.[1]
Berstel has been a member of the Lothaire group of mathematicians that developed the foundations of combinatorics of words. He has published several scientific monographs, includingTransductions and Context-free Languages (1979),[2] Theory of Codes (1985, jointly with Dominique Perrin),[3] and Codes and Automata (2009; jointly with Dominique Perrin and Christophe Reutenauer)[4] as well as the three Lothaire books.[5] [6] [7]