After resigning in the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1798, he studied in the Holy Roman Empire until 1800, when he enlisted in the Polish Legion at Marseille.

Ten years later he moved to Paris where he would spend most of his life working unremittingly to the last in the most difficult material circumstances.

He published over a hundred works, and left many more in manuscript; at 75 years of age and nearing death, he exclaimed: "God Almighty, there's still so much more I wanted to say!"

In 1803, Wroński joined the Marseille Observatory, and began developing an enormously complex theory of the structure and origin of the universe.

His earlier correspondence with major figures meant that his writings garnered more attention than a typical crackpot theory, even earning a review from the great mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange (which turned out to be categorically unfavorable).

[6] He remained for several years in England and, in 1821, published an introductory text on mathematics in London, which moderately improved his financial situation.

In 1852, shortly before his death, he did find a willing audience for his ideas: the occultist Eliphas Levi who met Wroński and was greatly impressed and "attracted by his religious and scientific utopianism."

His criticisms of Lagrange were for the most part unfounded but the coefficients in Wroński's new series proved important after his death, forming a determinant now known as the Wronskian (the name which Thomas Muir had given them in 1882).

But the abstract formalism and obscurity of his thought, the difficulty of his language, his boundless self-assurance and his uncompromising judgments of others alienated him from most of the scientific community.