Born in Poitiers, France, Michel Foucault studied philosophy and psychology at the École Normale Supérieure, working for a time with Merleau-Ponty. Around 1948, he formed a friendship with the Marxist Louis Althusser, but one of his main sources of philosophical inspiration was Nietzsche. He wrote his master's thesis on Hegel, and completed his doctoral dissertation on madness in the classical period in 1960. Foucault was influenced by historians of culture and science, who stress that no idea can be understood outside of its historical context. When, in 1969, he was elected chair at the College de France, he chose the title 'Professor of the History of Systems of Thought.' During the 1970s, he was very active politically, helping to form a group to support prisoners and participating in protests on behalf of marginalized groups. In 1983, he took a post at the University of California, Berkeley, but died the following year of AIDS.
