Her father was French astrophysicist Évry Schatzman, who also was president of the Rationalist Union.
Her daughter is married to Dan Mangoubi, an Israeli mathematician, a professor at the Albert Einstein Institute of the University of Jerusalem.
[1] Michelle Schatzman entered École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in 1968.
She obtained the aggregation and a PhD in 1971, under the leadership of Haïm Brezis and a state doctorate in 1979 under the direction of Jacques Louis Lions.
She returned to the CNRS in 2005 as a research director while continuing to teach, especially master students.