His parents were the philosopher and farmer Jean Louis Chappuis and Louise Charlotte Henriette Roux.

From 1877 he was in Leipzig, where he obtained his doctorate 2 years later with the thesis Sur la condensation des gaz à la surface du verre ("On the condensation of gases on the surface of glass").

From 1882 to 1902 he was attached to the Bureau international des poids et mesures in Sèvres, where he distinguished himself for his ability to determine the values of various physical constants, such as the boiling point of sulfur.

[5][6] From 1902 he returned to Basel for family reasons and ran his own private laboratory there.

He collaborated with the Swiss Federal Office of Metrology, contributing to the drafting of the foundations for international treaties on the metric system.