Maxime Rodinson (26 January 1915 – 23 May 2004) was a French Marxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. He was the son of a Russian-Polish clothing trader and his wife, who both were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. After studying oriental languages, he became a professor of Ethiopian (Ge'ez) at the École pratique des hautes études. He was the author of a body of work, including the book Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam.