[1] During the Geneva revolution of 1794, he was a freedom fighter and later fled to Scotland with the physician Alexander Marcet.

According to De la Rive, Allen believed that the body heat of animals is based on the combustion of food particles in the blood.

He also had the idea of a galvanometer based on the electrolytic decomposition of water, which was used by Ampère for determining the state of his voltaic piles.

He also supported Humphry Davy's views on electrochemistry, John Dalton's atomic theory and Jöns Jacob Berzelius's idea of definite proportions.

Their son was Auguste Arthur de la Rive, a noted Swiss physicist.