Michel Foucault, in full Paul-Michel Foucault, (born October 15, 1926, Poitiers, France—died June 25, 1984, Paris), French philosopher and historian, one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period.

The son and grandson of a physician, Michel Foucault was born to a solidly bourgeois family. He resisted what he regarded as the provincialism of his upbringing and his native country, and his career was marked by frequent sojourns abroad. A distinguished but sometimes erratic student, Foucault gained entry at the age of 20 to the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris in 1946. There he studied psychology and philosophy, embraced and then abandoned communism, and established a reputation as a sedulous, brilliant, and eccentric student.