Francis Bernard

Francis Bernard (born 1940) is a French engineer. In the 1970s, he initiated CAD/CAM developments at Dassault Aviation. They led to CATIA 3D, which was made available worldwide after he co-founded Dassault Systèmes in 1981. Early life and education Francis Bernard was born in Hanoi in 1940, still part of French Indochina, today Vietnam. His father was an engineer in the coalmines of northern Vietnam. He attended primary school in Haiphong and Dalat. In 1952, his family returned to France and settled in Paris. He joined the Janson-de-Sailly high school, following the course of preparatory classes before being accepted at Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (Supaero), a French university specialising in aerospace engineering, in 1965. After his military service, he joined Dassault Aviation's technical division headed by Jean Cabrière, and within it the Advanced Design Department headed by Pierre Bohn in charge of aerodynamics, flight quality and performance optimisation. He specialised in theoretical aerodynamics and quickly got involved in software development of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) programs. Professional career