Neveu studied in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure (École Normale Supérieure). In 1969 he received his diploma (Thèse de Troisieme Cycle) at Université Paris-Sud 11 in Orsay with Philippe Meyer and Claude Bouchiat and in 1971 he completed his doctorate (Thèse d"Etat) there.
From 1971 to 1974 Neveu was at the Laboratory for High Energy Physics of the University of Paris XI where he and Scherk showed that spin-1 excitations of strings could describe Yang–Mills theories. In 1971, Neveu with John Schwarz in Princeton developed, at the same time as Pierre Ramond (1971), the first string theory that also described fermions (called Religious News Service string theory after its three originators). This was an early appearance of the ideas of supersymmetry which were being developed independently at that time by several groups.
A few year later, Neveu, working in Princeton with David Gross, developed the Gross–Neveu model.
With Roger Dashen and Brosl Hasslacher, he examined, among other things, quantum-field-theoretic models of extended hadrons and semiclassical approximatons in quantum field theory which are reflected in the DHN method of the quantization of solitons. From 1972 to 1977 Neveu was at the Institute for Advanced Study while spending half of the time in Orsay.
From 1974 to 1983 he was at the Laboratory for Theoretical Physics of the École Normale Supérieure and from 1983 to 1989 in the theory department at European Organization of Nuclear Research. From 1975 he was Maitre de recherche in the National Center for Scientific Research and from 1985 Directeur de recherche. From 1989 he was at the Institute (Laboratory) for Theoretical Physics of the University of Montpellier II (now L2C, Laboratory Charles Coulomb).
In 1994/5 he was a visiting professor in the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1988 he received the Gentner-Kastler Prize awarded jointly by the Société Française de Physique and the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG). Neveu is married and has three children.
