Biography
De Chancourtois was born in Paris. At age eighteen, he entered the renowned École Polytechnique, one of the best known French grandes écoles of engineering and management. While he was there, de Chancourtois was a pupil of three famous French scientists, Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont, Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play, and Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrénoy. After completing his studies at École Polytechnique, de Chancourtois went on a geological expedition into Hungary, Armenia and Turkey. In 1848, de Chancourtois went back to Paris and joined the teaching faculty as professor of mine surveying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. He worked with Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play to organize a collection of minerals for the French government. In 1852, De Chancourtois was named the professor of geology at École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. In 1867, de Chancourtois was awarded the Légion d'honneur by Napoleon III of France. De Chancourtois led several overseas expeditions during the course of his life and served as the Inspector of Mines in Paris from 1875 until his death. As a mine inspector, he introduced safety laws to prevent methane gas explosions, which were frequent occurrences at the time.