In 1923 he passed the entrance exam and was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in the rue d'Ulm, Paris.

While at this school he also attended classes taught by Lucien Gallois and Albert Demangeon at the Institut de Géographie of the Sorbonne (University of Paris).

He undertook a year of military services, then accepted a teaching position at his former school, the Lycés Gay-Lussac in Limoges.

[2] His assistant in Lille was Philippe Pinchemel, who would follow Perpillou when he moved back to the Sorbonne and would lecture on economic geography at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris from 1948 to 1953.

In 1948 he accepted the chair of economic geography at the Institut de géographie of the Sorbonne, and was given the same office that had been used by his father-in-law.

[1] Perpillou influenced Marc Bloch with his treatment of climate, in which he did not rely on averages but argued that "It is not 'le temps qu'il fait' [the weather], in its often brutal integrality and reality, from which above all man suffers the repercussions."