Between 1799 and 1806 he studied medicine in Paris then returned to Saint-Sever in the Landes.

In 1854, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

[2][3] During his life he published 232 articles on arthropods (twenty on spiders) and was the author of Recherches anatomiques sur les Carabiques et sur plusieurs autres Coléoptères (1824–1826, Paris).

He was honoured in 1810, in the naming of Dufourea, which is a genus of lichen-forming fungi in the subfamily Xanthorioideae of the family Teloschistaceae.

[4] Dufour edited and distributed an exsiccata-like specimen series named Lichens Pyrénéens.