He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris, then became a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

He was emeritus professor in the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Génie Civil, a joint research unit of the university and the CNRS.

He invented in 1971/1972 the so-called sweeping process, which is a specific differential inclusion whose right-hand side is the normal cone to a time or state-dependent set (that may be convex or not).

After retiring in the 1980s, he started an intense research activity in Granular Matter, and contributed to settle the so-called Moreau-Jean event-capturing (or time-stepping) numerical scheme.

The Moreau-Jean scheme may be seen as an extension of the implicit Euler method, originating from the (second order) sweeping process formalism of the Lagrange dynamics with unilateral constraints and impacts, which is a specific Measure Differential Inclusion (i.e., a differential inclusion whose solutions are measures).