In 1813, he joined the Corps royal du génie, where he worked mapping France.
[1] In 1825, he participated, alongside John Herschel in a joint French-British governmental study of the difference in longitudes between the observatories of Paris and Greenwich.
In 1829, he entered the Bureau des Longitudes and, in 1832, became the secretary-librarian of the Paris Observatory and studied geodesy with François Arago.
He developed a method of calculating tables to determine the phases of the moon over much longer durations than before (over 30 centuries).
Presented at the French Academy of Sciences, it earned admission as a Free Academician on December 13, 1847.