A major contribution was on the synthesis, movement and storage of starch examining the role of the leucoplast, and the enzymes involved in amylolysis in the cytoplasm.

With scholarships he studied at Auxonne, Dijon and received a bachelor's degree in 1889 (aged 17) and went to join university after a year in military service.

He graduated in science in 1895 from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and worked in the lab of Gaston Bonnier at Fontainebleau-Avon.

His wife died following a thyroid surgery and he then left Poitiers and moved to Lille, exchanging his position with Professor Ricôme.

[2] His older daughter Hélène Maige (from his first marriage) became the first woman to hold the position of an assistant in the botany laboratory at Lille in 1937.