Michel Foucault (15 October 1926–25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian, critic and sociologist. He held a chair at the Collège de France, giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the University of California, Berkeley.

Michel Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. Foucault's work on power, and the relationships among power, knowledge, and discourse, has been widely discussed and applied. In the 1960s Foucault was often associated with the structuralist movement. Foucault later distanced himself from structuralism. Sometimes described as postmodernist, Foucault always rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels.