He was an assistant to Claude-Louis Berthollet, eventually became a professor of physics at the Polytechnical School, Paris (1820), and was appointed its director (1830). While working in chemistry he impoverished himself purchasing equipment. During investigations of the highly explosive nitrogen trichloride, which he discovered in 1813, he lost the sight in one eye and nearly lost a hand. His important research in physics was carried out with Alexis-Thérèse Petit. In 1817 they showed that Newton's law of cooling was true only for small differences in temperature. Their work on the measurement of temperature and the transfer of heat (1818) was honoured by the French Academy.

A paper with Jöns Berzelius (1820) was concerned with fluid densities and water. With Louis-Jacques Thenard he explored the property of certain metals to facilitate combinations of gases. He also studied the refracting power of gases (1826) and the specific heat of gases (1829). He published a study with François Arago of the elasticity of steam at high temperatures (1830). His last paper (1838) described experiments determining the heat evolved in a chemical reaction.