[4] Lecoq de Boisbaudran was a member of a noble family of Huguenots from the French provinces of Poitou and Angoumois.

The Edict of Nantes (1598) granted substantial civil rights to the Huguenots even though it maintained Catholicism's position as the established religion of France.

[7] The Lecoq de Boisbaudran family was of considerable fortune until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, after which much of their property was confiscated and sold.

[5] Paul Lecoq de Boisbaudran established a successful wine business in Cognac, benefiting from the hard work of the entire family including young Paul-Émile.

[6][8] Anne Louise Lecoq de Boisbaudran was well educated and taught her son Paul-Émile history and foreign languages, including English.

[9] With the support of his family, he assembled a modest chemical laboratory on the second floor of their home on the Rue de Lusignan.

[6] Lecoq de Boisbaudran's early investigations focused on understanding the phenomenon of supersaturation, in which substances can exist in solution in higher concentrations than is possible under normal conditions.

[6] Lecoq de Boisbaudran made major contributions to the then-new science of spectroscopy, which relates to the interaction of light and matter.

Beginning in 1874, Lecoq de Boisbaudran investigated a sample of 52 kg of the mineral ore sphalerite obtained from the Pierrefitte mine in the Pyrenees.

It was later suggested that Lecoq de Boisbaudran had named the element after himself, since gallus is the Latin translation of the French le coq.

[6][19] Unknown to Lecoq de Boisbaudran,[4] the existence of gallium had been predicted during 1871 by Dmitri Mendeleev, who gave it the name eka-aluminium.

Lecoq de Boisbaudran noted a spectral band in the yellow-green portion of the spectrum, indicative of a new element.

[22] For his accomplishments, Lecoq de Boisbaudran was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour (1876),[19] the Bordin Prize from the French Academy of Sciencies (1872),[23] the Davy Medal (1879)[24][25] and the Prix Lacaze of 10,000 francs (1879).