[2][3] During his doctoral study, and under the guidance of Pierre Aigrain he researched the possibilities for charged particle detection offered by semiconductor diodes and developed some of the first such detectors in 1959.
These discoveries were immediately put to use in the field of stable isotopic tracing of atomic transport processes during thin-film growth and transformation.
[3] In 1968, he headed the installation of the HVEC AN2500 accelerator in the Solid State Physics group of the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
During this time, he also laid down the foundations of the stochastic treatment of charged particle energy loss processes, opening the way to rapid and accurate calculations of excitation curves obtained around narrow nuclear resonances, and providing an approach to calculating the overshoot on the leading edge, due to the Lewis effect.
He has helped in setting up several IBA laboratories around the world and was the director of AGLAE, the accelerator at the Louvre museum dedicated to analysis of cultural heritage materials.