Malus was born in Paris, France. He participated in Napoleon's expedition into Egypt, 1798 to 1801. Malus became a member of the French academy of sciences in 1810.
His mathematical work was almost entirely concerned with the study of light. This involved him in studying geometrical systems called ray systems, closely connected to Plücker's line complexes. He conducted experiments to verify Huygens' theories of light and rewrote the theory in analytical form. His discovery of the polarisation of light by reflection was published in 1809 and his theory of double refraction of light in crystals in 1810.
He is probably best known now for "Malus' Law", the law giving the intensity produced when a polarizer is placed in front of an incident beam:
I = I0cos2 θ
where θ is the angle between the polarisation direction of the incident beam and the axis of the polariser.
Étienne Louis Malus's father was LouisMalus de Mitry and was Treasurer of France.
In 1811 Malus served, along with Lagrange, Legendre, Laplace and Haüy, on the committee to decide on who to award the prize to for the best work on the propagation of heat in solid bodies.
Malus received many honours for his work, in particular he was awarded a prize from the
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