As an engineer, he participated in the construction of the second line of French railway between Lyon and St Etienne, and as a Sinologist, published a large body of work, the result of a "knowledge rarely combined.
"[1][2] Son of the mathematician and physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot, he studied classics and mathematics as a free student at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris.
In 1827, after a preparatory trip to England, he joined forces with Marc Seguin in the construction of the Lyon–Saint-Etienne railway, whose concession is granted to "MM.
[3] When this project was completed in 1833, he decided to enjoy the financial independence he had gained to study the Chinese language and literature.
Besides his memoirs on Chinese civilization, most of which were published in the Journal Asiatique, he was also the author of a Dictionnaire Géographique de l'Empire Chinois (Geographical Dictionary of the Chinese Empire) and the Histoire de l'Instruction publique en Chine (History of Public Education in China), as well as the translation into French of the Zhou Li or The Rites of Zhou, from the series of books forming the Classic of Rites.