Becquerel was born in Paris and was in turn the pupil, assistant and successor of his father at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle.

He was also appointed professor at the short-lived Agronomic Institute at Versailles in 1849, and in 1853 received the chair of physics at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.

In 1848 he produced color photographs of the solar spectrum, and also of camera images, by a technique later found to be akin to the Lippmann interference method, but the camera exposures required were impractically long and the images could not be stabilized, their colors persisting only if kept in total darkness,[5] however this work is based on the discoveries of J. T. Seebeck prior to 1810.

It was in connection with these latter inquiries that he devised his phosphoroscope, an apparatus which enabled the interval between exposure to the source of light and observation of the resulting effects to be varied at will and accurately measured.

He investigated the diamagnetic and paramagnetic properties of substances and was keenly interested in the phenomena of electrochemical decomposition, accumulating much evidence in favor of Faraday's law of electrolysis and proposing a modified statement of it which was intended to cover certain apparent exceptions.