While pursuing a medical career as obstetrician, was one of the most faithful attendants of the lectures by the abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700-1770), whom he succeeded, in 1760, in the chair of experimental physics at the Collège Louis le Grand in Paris. In 1795, became professor of physics and chemistry at the École Centrale. His treatise Description et usage d'un cabinet de physique (Paris, 1775) offers an excellent compendium of experimental physics in his day.