Hagenmuller founded the Laboratoire de Chimie du Solide (Solid-State Chemistry Laboratory) of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and he served as its Director until 1985.
[2] After studying in Strasbourg and Clermont-Ferrand, during WW2, Hagenmuller was imprisoned in the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps.
Subsequently, he spent two years teaching as a lecturer (maître de conférences) in Vietnam.
He returned to France in 1956 and was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Rennes, working on "nonstoichiometry in vanadium and tungsten bronzes, two-dimensional oxyhalogenides, borides, and silicides, magnetic spinels".
[3] He also collaborated with noted scientists such as John Goodenough, Jacques Friedel and Nevill Francis Mott on insulator-to-metal transitions of vanadium oxides.