Mining engineer. He held the chair of physics at the Paris School of Mines (École des mines de Paris) from 1919 to 1923. Inventor of electrical prospecting, he identified deposits by means of comparative resistivity measurements of the soil, which enabled a remarkable boom in petroleum prospecting. He is the founder of the General Company of Geophysics (Compagnie générale de géophysique) then of the Schlumberger Well Surveying Company