He studied sciences at the École normale supérieure (Paris), and from 1829 to 1849 was associated with the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, first as a professor, and beginning in 1832, an administrator.

[1] For a brief period of time, he was chair of physics at the École Polytechnique (1831), where he was succeeded by César Despretz in 1831 and Gabriel Lamé in 1832.

[2] In 1852, he was compulsorily retired from the Faculty of Sciences because he refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the imperial government that took power in late 1851.

He speculated that water vapour and carbon dioxide might trap infrared radiation in the atmosphere, warming the earth enough to support plant and animal life.

[9] Also, it was translated into German by Johann Heinrich Jakob Müller, and published with the title, Lehrbuch der Physik und Meteorologie.