In 1823 he was selected along with Dufrénoy by Brochant de Villiers, the professor of geology in the École des Mines, to accompany him on a scientific tour to England and Scotland, in order to inspect the mining and metallurgical establishments of the country, and to study the principles on which George Bellas Greenough's geological map of England (1820) had been prepared, with a view to the construction of a similar map of France.

[1] In 1835 he was appointed professor of geology at the École des Mines, in succession to Brochant de Villiers, whose assistant he had been in the duties of the chair since 1827.

[3] By a decree of the president he was made a senator of France in 1852, and on the death of François Arago in 1853 he was chosen as perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences.

[1] Élie de Beaumont's name is widely known to geologists in connection with his theory of the origin of mountain ranges, first propounded in a paper read to the Academy of Sciences in 1829, and afterwards elaborated in his Notice sur le système des montagnes (3 volumes, 1852).

Probably the best service Élie de Beaumont rendered to science, however, was in connection with the geological map of France, in the preparation of which he had the leading share.