Having graduated from naval officer's school, Maurice de Broglie spent nine years in the French Navy, serving on a gunboat at Bizerte and in the Mediterranean Squadron.

De Broglie defied his family's wishes and left the navy in 1904 to pursue a scientific career.

He studied under Paul Langevin at the Collège de France in Paris, receiving his doctorate in 1908.

He occasionally collaborated with his younger brother Louis, who followed his professional lead and was training as a physicist, and they coauthored a paper in 1921.

In 1942 he succeeded his mentor, assuming Langevin's chair in physics at the Collège de France.