[2][3] Mauguin originally intended to become a school teacher and enrolled at École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud in 1902.
Later he moved to École Normale Supérieure, Paris, where he obtained his Doctor of Science in 1910 in the field of organic chemistry.
During his chemistry studies, he also attended lectures on mathematics offered at Sorbonne University, including those by Émile Picard, Henri Poincaré, Paul Painlevé, and Édouard Goursat.
[1] He moved back to University of Paris in 1919 and worked under Frédéric Wallerant as an associate professor of mineralogy.
[4][5] Mauguin was the first to notice that when he sandwiched the semi-solid liquid crystals between two aligned polarizers, he could twist them in relation to each other, but the light continued to be transmitted.