he was appointed assistant to the master of the mint and then chemist of the royal mint (1869), professor of metallurgy at the school of mines (1880) and chemist and assayer to the royal mint (1882–1902). he developed procedures for the analysis of alloy constituents and an automatic recording pyrometer used to record temperature changes in furnaces and molten materials;. he became a world authority on the technical aspects of minting coins. his work had many practical and industrial applications.