Bruhat studied physics from 1906 until 1909 at the École normale supérieure of Paris (ENS), with, among other, Henri Abraham, Marcel Brillouin and Aimé Cotton, and at the Sorbonne, among others with Gabriel Lippmann and Edmond Bouty.

After being awarded a first degree in mathematics and physics, he taught for a year at Gymnasium and afterwards was an assistant at the École normale supérieure de Paris, which gave him time to prepare his PhD thesis with Aimé Cotton in Optics, which he defended in 1914 before the start of World War I.

In 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo since he was unwilling to collaborate in locating a student member of the French resistance at the school.

Georges Bruhat performed research in optics (for instance optically active media, double refraction, wavelength dependencies of absorption and refractive index) and was known in France for his four-volume physics texts (Cours de physique générale, Masson).

The Three Physicists Prize (Prix des trois physiciens) was founded in 1951 to honor Georges Bruhat along with Eugene Bloch and Henri Abraham.