Background
Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822, in the small town of Dôle, France, to a Catholic family of a poor tanner. He was the third child of Jean-Joseph Pasteur and Jeanne-Etiennette Roqui.
Louis
45 Rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
In Louis 1843 Louis studied at Ecole Normale Supérieure.
1857
Paris, France
Louis worked as a director of scientific studies at École Normale Supérieure.
1848
Louis was a professor of physics at Dijon Lycée.
1885
Louis Pasteur in his laboratory
1856
Louis received the Rumford Medal.
1873
Louis received the Brazilian Order of the Rose.
Louis received the Order of the Medjidie (I Class).
1848
Louis was a professor of physics at Dijon Lycée.
1856
Louis received the Rumford Medal.
1857
Paris, France
Louis worked as a director of scientific studies at École Normale Supérieure.
1873
Louis received the Brazilian Order of the Rose.
1885
Louis Pasteur in his laboratory
Louis Pasteur
45 Rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
In Louis 1843 Louis studied at Ecole Normale Supérieure.
Louis received the Order of the Medjidie (I Class).
Marie Pasteur, Louis's wife
Dole, France
The house in which Pasteur was born.
Pasteur experimenting in his laboratory.
1 Rue du Professeur Calmette, 59000 Lille, France
Institut Pasteur de Lille
Odessa, Ukraine
Vulitsya Pastera or Pasteur Street
Rastislavova 785/43, 040 01 Košice, Slovakia
Louis Pasteur University Hospital
Louis Pasteur aged 20.
Glassware of the same type Louis Pasteur would have used to culture microorganisms.
Marie Pasteur
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biologist chemist microbiologist
Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822, in the small town of Dôle, France, to a Catholic family of a poor tanner. He was the third child of Jean-Joseph Pasteur and Jeanne-Etiennette Roqui.
Pasteur attended secondary school at the Collège d'Arbois. In October 1838, he left for Paris to join the Pension Barbet, but became homesick and returned in November. In 1839, he entered the Collège Royal at Besançon to study philosophy and earned his Bachelor of Letters degree in 1840.
Later in 1842, Pasteur took the entrance test for the École Normale Supérieure. He passed the first set of tests, but because his ranking was low, Pasteur decided not to continue and try again next year. He went back to the Pension Barbet to prepare for the test. He also attended classes at the Lycée Saint-Louis and lectures of Jean-Baptiste Dumas at the Sorbonne. In 1843, he passed the test with a high ranking and entered the École Normale Supérieure.
After serving briefly as professor of physics at the Dijon Lycée in 1848, he became professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg. In 1854, he was named dean of the new faculty of sciences at Lille University, where he began his studies on fermentation. The course of his activities is displayed in his publications Studies on Wine (1866), Studies on Beer (1876).
His germ theory of fermentation was first presented in 1857 in a short paper which has become a classic, Sur la fermentation appelée lactique ("On Lactic Fermentation"), in which he claimed that the different types of microbes could be separated from each other by proper techniques, and could be shown to differ in nutritional requirements, and susceptibility to antiseptics. Because of his study in germs, Pasteur encouraged doctors to sanitize their hands and equipment before surgery. Prior to this, few doctors or their assistants practiced these procedures.
In 1857, he moved to Paris as the director of scientific studies at the École Normale Supérieure where he took control from 1858 to 1867 and introduced a series of reforms to improve the standard of scientific work. He examined the chemical, optical and crystallographic properties of a group of compounds known as tartrates. In 1863, he was appointed professor of geology, physics, and chemistry at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, a position he held until his resignation in 1867. In 1867, he became the chair of organic chemistry at the Sorbonne, but he later gave up the position because of poor health.
The Franco-Prussian War, with its trains of wounded, stimulated Pasteur to press his microbial theory of disease and infection on the military medical corps, winning grudging agreement to the sterilization of instruments and the steaming of bandages. Pasteur was now prepared to move from the most primitive manifestations of life, crystals and the simpler forms of life in the microbial world, to the diseases of the higher animals. The opportunity arose through a particularly devastating outbreak of anthrax, a killer plague of cattle and sheep in 1876/1877.
In December 1879, Pasteur was first to use a weakened culture of the bacteria to inoculate chickens. The chickens survived, and when he inoculated them with a virulent strain, they were immune to it. In 1880, Pasteur presented his results to the French Academy of Sciences, saying that the bacteria were weakened by contact with oxygen. Finally, in 1884, in collaboration with other investigators, he perfected a method of cultivating the virus in the tissues of rabbits. A vaccine could then be prepared for injection. The success of this method was greeted with jubilation all over the world.
Pasteur's seventieth birthday was the occasion of a national holiday. At the celebration held at the Sorbonne, Pasteur was too weak to speak to the delegates who had gathered from all over the world. He died on September 28, 1895, near Paris.
Louis Pasteur is regarded as one of the three main founders of bacteriology, together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch. He is popularly known as the "father of microbiology", a founder of the Pasteur Institute. He reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His medical discoveries provided direct support for the germ theory of disease and its application in clinical medicine.
He is best known to the general public for his invention of the technique of treating milk and wine to stop bacterial contamination, a process now called pasteurization. Pasteur also made significant discoveries in chemistry, most notably on the molecular basis for the asymmetry of certain crystals and racemization.
His grandson, Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot, wrote that Pasteur had only kept from his Catholic background a spiritualism without religious practice, although Catholic observers often said Louis Pasteur remained throughout his whole life an ardent Christian.
While believing strongly in experimental science, he also maintained that there exist spiritual values that transcend the scientific approach.
According to him, "Pasteurization" was thus a technique which could not only preserve wine, beer, and milk but could also prevent or drastically reduce infection in the surgeon's operating room. Another by-product of Pasteur's work on fermentation was his elucidation of the fact that certain families of microbes require oxygen whereas others do not.
Among the many honors accorded him were membership in the Académie Academie des Sciences (1862), the Académie Academie de Médecine Medecine (1873), and the Académie Academie Française Francaise (1882).
He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1869. In 1873 Pasteur was elected to the Académie Nationale de Médecine. In 1881 he was elected to a seat at the Académie française left vacant by Émile Littré. In 1883 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Physical Characteristics: Over-worked and grief-stricken, Pasteur suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1868 which left part of his left arm and leg permanently paralyzed.
At the University of Strasbourg he met Marie Laurent, daughter of the university's rector in 1849. They were married on May 29, 1849, and together had five children, only two of whom survived to adulthood; the other three died of typhoid.
She was the scientific assistant and co-worker of her spouse.
