 In 1984, Pitman was awarded the Society for Sedimentary Geology’s Francis Shepard Medal.In 1996, he was awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal by the American Geophysical Union.In 1998, he received the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the United States National Academy of Sciences "for his fundamental contribution to the plate tectonic revolution through insightful analysis of marine magnetic anomalies and for his studies of the causes and effects of sea-level changes".