After studying at the École nationale supérieure des industries chimiques de Nancy from 1958 to 1961, he obtained a doctorate under the supervision of Professor Serge David in 1966 and continued for two years at Harvard University in Massachusetts (United States) as a post-doctoral researcher with Professor Roger W. Jeanloz. He then entered the University of Orléans in 1969 as a professor, where he was Director of the Institute of Organic and Analytical Chemistry from 1978 to 1987. He then became Professor of Chemistry in 1986 at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, where he then headed the Laboratory of Selective Processes in Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the École normale supérieure. He then became Professor Emeritus at Sorbonne University in 2006 and joined the Paris Institute of Molecular Chemistry.