In 1727 he gained the prize given by the French Academy of Sciences for his paper On the masting of ships, beating Leonhard Euler; and two other prizes, one for his dissertation On the best method of observing the altitude of stars at sea, the other for his paper On the best method of observing the variation of the compass at sea.

In 1730 he was made professor of hydrography at Le Havre, and succeeded Pierre Louis Maupertuis as associate geometer of the Academy of Sciences.

In 1735 Bouguer sailed with Charles Marie de La Condamine on a scientific mission to Peru, to measure the length of a degree of latitude in the meridian arc near the equator.

[3] In 1746 he published the first treatise of naval architecture, Traité du navire, which among other achievements first explained the use of the metacenter as a measure of ships' stability.

His name is also recalled as the meteorological term Bouguer's halo (also known as Ulloa's halo, after Antonio de Ulloa, a Spanish member of his South American expedition) which an observer may see infrequently in fog when sun breaks through (for example, on a mountain) and looks down-sun – effectively a "Fog bow" (as opposed to a "rain-bow").

It is "An infrequently observed meteorological phenomenon; a faint white, circular arc or complete ring of light that has a radius of 39 degrees and is centred on the antisolar point.