Born in Saint-Martin-lès-Melle,[1] Deux-Sèvres, France, his father was a painter who moved to Paris when Marcel was a boy.

The Brillouin family returned to Saint-Martin-lès-Melle during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to escape the fighting.

After the war, he returned to Paris and entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1874 and graduated in 1878.

Brillouin then held successive posts as assistant professor of physics at universities in Nancy, Dijon and Toulouse before returning to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1888.

[3] During his career he was the author of over 200 experimental and theoretic papers on a wide range of topics which include the kinetic theory of gases, viscosity, thermodynamics, electricity, and the physics of melting conditions.