Duffieux became interested in physics by listening to the lectures of Pierre Duhem in high school in Bordeaux.

During the first world war he was involved in military work under the supervision of Henri Bénard, applying Fourier methods to measuring the coefficients of thermal conductivity.

[3] In 1920 Duffieux became an assistant of Charles Fabry in Marseille, earning his doctorate in 1925 with a thesis on band spectroscopy.

During World War II Duffieux discovered Fourier optics, presenting his ideas at a meeting of the French Society of Physics in Paris in 1941,[5] and publishing several papers.

[8] A second edition of Duffieux's book was published in 1970 by Masson (Paris) and an English translation appeared in 1983.