In 1916, as officer cadet, he was seriously injured at the fort Vaux, during the battle of Verdun, after saving wounded soldiers, and at first, was considered as dead *.
Although he was originally a bacteriologist, he defended his thesis of medicine in the service of professor Levy-Valensi, psychiatrist, who remained one of his best friends.
In the 1950s he promoted the vaccination against poliomyelitis, looked after the water quality for the inhabitants of Paris, obtained a law forbidding the hooter in town, and was one of the first to alert the authorities and the public about atmospheric and acoustic pollution.
At the end of his life, he was also asked to give lectures about human habitation hygiene at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, where future empress Farah Diba was one of his students.
At the beginning of the 20th century, slums were still numerous in the town centres, and Albert Besson put as an evidence that, dark, damp and overcrowded, they were the main source of epidemics, chiefly tuberculosis and diphtheria.