Michel Antoine

Michel Antoine (28 September 1925, Saarbrücken – 20 February 2015, Paris), former professor at the University of Caen, research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and curator at the Archives nationales, was a noted biographer of Louis XV, and a French historian of the Modern period, specialising in France's role in European political civilisation in the eighteenth century.

Career Antoine was a specialist of the French state apparatus and of French and related European political civilization in the eighteenth century. He was an archivist and paleographer, with professional positions as curator at the Archives nationales, research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and professor at the University of Caen, and from 1987, director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études.