Background
He was the son of physician Alexandre Jacques François Bertrand (1795-1831) and elder brother to mathematician Joseph Louis François Bertrand (1822-1900).
He was the son of physician Alexandre Jacques François Bertrand (1795-1831) and elder brother to mathematician Joseph Louis François Bertrand (1822-1900).
Alexandre Bertrand studied at Ecole Normale Superieure de la rue d"Ulm, and after a three-year expedition to Babylon, he became a member of the École française d"Athènes (1849).
From 1851 to 1857 he was a professor of rhetoric at Rennes. Bertrand was a pioneer of Gallic and Gallo-Roman archaeology, and was involved in the archaeological dig at Alise-Sainte-Reine. In 1882 he became a professor of archaeology at the École du Louvre.
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres]
He was an editor of Revue Archeologique and a member of Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.