He married early and as a young man struggled to support his family on the meager wages of a transcriber for notaries and attorney.

In spite of his financial problems and minimal education, Rolle studied algebra and Diophantine analysis (a branch of number theory) on his own.

Rolle's fortune changed dramatically in 1682 when he published an elegant solution of a difficult, unsolved problem in Diophantine analysis.

The public recognition of his achievement led to a patronage under minister Louvois, a job as an elementary mathematics teacher, and eventually to a short-termed administrative post in the Ministry of War.

While Rolle's forte was always Diophantine analysis, his most important work was a book on the algebra of equations, called Traité d'algèbre, published in 1690.

In that book Rolle firmly established the notation for the nth root of a real number, and proved a polynomial version of the theorem that today bears his name.

Rolle was an early critic of infinitesimal calculus, arguing that it was inaccurate, based upon unsound reasoning, and was a collection of ingenious fallacies,[3] but later changed his opinion.

Specifically, he presented an explicit algebraic curve, and alleged that some of its local minima are missed when one applies the methods of infinitesimal calculus.