Pasteur, Louis

born Dec. 27, 1822, Dole, France

died Sept. 28, 1895, Saint-Cloud, near Paris

French chemist and microbiologist.

Early in his career, after studies at the École Normale Supérieure, he researched the effects of polarized light on chemical compounds. In 1857 he became director of scientific studies at the École. His studies of fermentation of alcohol and milk (souring) showed that yeast could reproduce without free oxygen (the Pasteur effect); he deduced that fermentation and food spoilage were due to the activity of microorganisms and could be prevented by excluding or destroying them. His work overturned the concept of spontaneous generation (life arising from nonliving matter) and led to heat pasteurization, allowing vinegar, wine, and beer to be produced and transported without spoiling. He saved the French silk industry by his work on silkworm diseases. In 1881 he perfected a way to isolate and weaken germs, and he went on to develop vaccines against anthrax in sheep and cholera in chickens, following Edward Jenner's example. He turned his attention to researching rabies, and in 1885 his inoculating with a weakened virus saved the life of a boy bitten by a rabid dog. In 1888 he founded the Pasteur Institute for rabies research, prevention, and treatment.

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▪ French chemist and microbiologist

Introduction

born Dec. 27, 1822, Dole, France

died Sept. 28, 1895, Saint-Cloud, near Paris

 French chemist and microbiologist (microbiology) whose contributions were among the most varied and valuable in the history of science (science, history of) and industry. It was he who proved that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease; he who pioneered the use of vaccines for rabies, anthrax, and chicken cholera; he who saved the beer, wine, and silk industries of France and other countries; he who performed important pioneer work in stereochemistry; and he who originated the process known as pasteurization.

Early life and education

      Pasteur was the descendant of generations of tanners. His great-grandfather had been an indentured labourer who had purchased his freedom. In his youth Pasteur showed little interest in anything but drawing and produced a number of pastels, portraits of his parents and friends. After attending primary and secondary schools in Arbois, where his family had moved, and then in Besançon, Pasteur earned his bachelier ès lettres (bachelor of arts) in 1840 and bachelier ès sciences (bachelor of science) at the Royal College in Besançon in 1842. The following year he was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure, the famous teachers' college in Paris. He became licencié ès sciences (master of science) in 1845, and, after acquiring an advanced degree in physical sciences, he won his docteur ès sciences (doctor of philosophy) in 1847. On May 22, 1848, at the age of 26, he presented before the Paris Academy of Sciences a paper reporting a remarkable discovery he had just made—that certain chemical compounds were capable of splitting into a “right” component and a “left” component, one component being the mirror image of the other. His discoveries arose out of a crystallographic investigation of tartaric acid, an acid formed in grape fermentation that is widely used commercially, and racemic acid—a new, hitherto unknown acid that had been discovered in certain industrial processes in the Alsace region. Both acids not only had identical chemical compositions but also had the same structure; yet they showed marked differences in properties. The German chemist Eilhardt Mitscherlich (Mitscherlich, Eilhardt) (1794–1863) had shown that while ordinary commercial tartaric acid affects the rotation of plane polarized light, the unknown acid had no such effect. With the help of his own chemical methods Pasteur supplied the clue to this enigma by showing that the salts of the racemic acid consisted of two types of crystals that were mirror images of one another (like right- and left-hand gloves). When separated the two types of crystals rotated plane polarized light to the same degree but in opposite directions (one to the right, or clockwise, and the other to the left, or counterclockwise). One of the two crystal forms of racemic acid proved to be identical with the tartaric acid of fermentation. As Pasteur showed further, one component of the racemic acid (that identical with the tartaric acid from fermentation) could be utilized for nutrition by micro-organisms, whereas the other, which is now termed its optical antipode, was not assimilable by living organisms. On the basis of these experiments, Pasteur elaborated his theory of molecular asymmetry, showing that the biological properties of chemical substances depend not only on the nature of the atoms constituting their molecules but also on the manner in which these atoms are arranged in space.

Research and teaching career

 In 1848 Pasteur was appointed professor of physics at the Dijon Lycée (secondary school) but was shortly called to the University of Strasbourg as professor of chemistry. There, on May 29, 1849, he married the daughter of the rector of the university, Marie Laurent, by whom he was to have five children, only two of whom survived childhood.

      In 1854 Pasteur became dean of the new science faculty at the University of Lille (Lille I, II, and III, Universities of), where he initiated a highly modern educational concept: by instituting evening classes for the many young workmen of the industrial city, conducting his regular students around large factories in the area, and organizing supervised practical courses, he demonstrated the relationship that he believed should exist between theory and practice, between university and industry. At Lille, after receiving a query from an industrialist on the production of alcohol from grain and beet sugar, Pasteur began his studies on fermentation. In the course of his analysis he once again encountered—though in liquid form—new “right” and “left” compounds. From studying the fermentation of alcohol he went on to the problem of lactic fermentation, showing yeast to be an organism capable of reproducing itself, even in artificial media, without free oxygen—a concept that became known as the Pasteur effect.

      In 1857 he was named Director of Scientific Studies at the École Normale Supérieure. He continued his researches and announced that fermentation was the result of the activity of minute organisms and that when fermentation failed, either the necessary organism was absent or was unable to grow properly. Before this discovery, all explanations of fermentation had lacked experimental foundation; Pasteur showed that milk could be soured by injecting a number of organisms from buttermilk or beer but could be kept unchanged if such organisms were excluded.

      He was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1862, and the following year a chair at the École des Beaux-Arts was established for him for a new and original program of instruction in geology, physics, and chemistry applied to the fine arts.

      As a scholar engaged in research, Pasteur eventually found his administrative duties as Director of Scientific Studies at the École Supérieure too irksome. He gave up the post in 1867, and, thanks to the support of Emperor Napoleon III, a laboratory of physiological chemistry was created for him at the same institution. As a logical sequel to his work on fermentation, he began research on spontaneous generation (the concept that bacterial life arose spontaneously), a question which at that time divided scientists into two opposing camps. Pasteur's recognition of the fact that both lactic and alcohol fermentations were hastened by exposure to air led him to wonder whether his invisible organisms were always present in the atmosphere or whether they were spontaneously generated. By means of simple and precise experiments, including the filtration of air and the exposure of unfermented liquids to the air of the high Alps, he proved that food (food preservation) decomposes when placed in contact with germs present in the air, which cause its putrefaction, and that it does not undergo transformation or putrefy in such a way as to spontaneously generate new organisms within itself.

      After laying the theoretical groundwork, Pasteur proceeded to apply his findings to the study of vinegar and wine, two commodities of great importance in the economy of France; his pasteurization process, the destruction of harmful germs by heat, made it possible to produce, preserve, and transport these products without their undergoing deterioration.

      In 1865 he undertook a government mission to investigate the diseases of the silkworm, which were about to put an end to the production of silk at a time when it comprised a major section of France's economy. To carry out the investigation, he moved to the south of France, the centre of silkworm breeding. Three years later he announced that he had isolated the bacilli of two distinct diseases and had found methods of preventing contagion and of detecting diseased stock.

      In 1870 Pasteur devoted himself to the problem of beer. Following an investigation conducted both in France and among the brewers in London, he devised, as he had done for vinegar and wine, a procedure for manufacturing beer that would prevent its deterioration with time. British exporters, whose ships had to sail entirely around the African continent, were thus able to send British beer as far as India without fear of its deteriorating.

Later years

      Although Pasteur was partially paralyzed in 1868 and applied for retirement from the university, he continued his researches. In 1873 he was elected a member of the Academy of Medicine, and in 1874 the French Parliament provided him with an award that would ensure his material security while he pursued his work.

      When in 1881 he had perfected a technique for reducing the virulence of various disease-producing microorganisms, he succeeded in vaccinating (vaccine) a herd of sheep against the disease known as anthrax. Likewise, he was able to protect fowl from chicken cholera, for he had observed that once animals stricken with certain diseases had recovered they were later immune to a fresh attack. Thus, by isolating the germ of the disease and by cultivating an attenuated, or weakened, form of the germ and inoculating fowl with the culture, he could immunize (immunization) the animals against the malady. In this he was following the example of the English physician Edward Jenner (Jenner, Edward), who used cowpox to vaccinate against the closely related but more virulent disease smallpox.

      On April 27, 1882, Pasteur was elected a member of the Académie Française, at which point he undertook research that proved to be the most spectacular of all—the preventive treatment of rabies. After experimenting with inoculations of saliva from infected animals, he came to the conclusion that the virus was also present in the nerve centres, and he demonstrated that a portion of the medulla oblongata of a rabid dog, when injected into the body of a healthy animal, produced symptoms of rabies. By further work on the dried tissues of infected animals and the effect of time and temperature on these tissues, he was able to obtain a weakened form of the virus that could be used for inoculation. Having detected the rabies virus by its effects on the nervous system and attenuated its virulence, he applied his procedure to man; on July 6, 1885, he saved the life of a nine-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The experiment was an outstanding success, opening the road to protection from a terrible disease. In 1888 the Pasteur Institute was inaugurated in Paris for the purpose of undertaking fundamental research, prevention, and treatment of rabies. Pasteur, although in failing health, headed the institute until his death in 1895.

      Louis Pasteur brought about a veritable revolution in the 19th-century scientific method. By abandoning his laboratory and by tackling the agents of disease in their natural environments, he was able through his investigations to supply the complete solution to a given question, not only identifying the agent responsible for a disease but also indicating the remedy.

      A skillful experimenter endowed with great curiosity and a remarkable gift of observation, Pasteur devoted himself with immense enthusiasm to science and its applications to medicine, agriculture, and industry. He was prompt to defend his ideas with courage and often with considerable harshness—in writings as well as in speech—toward his opponents. It was chiefly in his work on spontaneous generation and on rabies that he encountered the strongest opposition to his ideas (which were, for the time, revolutionary) from medical circles and the press. He was happy to accept the glory and honours that came his way, for he was well aware of his own value and of his scientific successes. A great friendship developed between Pasteur and the renowned British surgeon Sir Joseph Lister (1827–1912), who was quick to apply to his own discipline the discoveries of his French colleague.

Jacques-M.-R. Nicolle Ed.

Additional Reading

Studies of Pasteur's life and work include Émile Duclaux, Pasteur: The History of a Mind (1920, reissued 1973; originally published in French, 1896), a scientific and philosophical work written by a collaborator of Pasteur; François Dagognet, Méthodes et doctrine dans l'œuvre de Pasteur (1967), primarily a detailed work of methodology; René J. Dubos, Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science (1950, reissued 1986), more philosophical than scientific; Elie Metchnikoff (I.I. Mechnikov), The Founders of Modern Medicine: Pasteur, Koch, Lister (1939, reprinted 1971; originally published in French, 1933), written by an important scholar who worked with Pasteur; Jacques Nicolle, Louis Pasteur: A Master of Scientific Enquiry (1961; originally published in French, 1953), and Louis Pasteur: The Story of His Major Discoveries (1961), both works giving a complete authoritative review of Pasteur's discoveries, and Pasteur: sa vie, sa méthode, ses découvertes (1969), an account of Pasteur's life and work; and René Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, 2 vol. (1902, reissued 1960; originally published in French, 1900), written by Pasteur's son-in-law, who was also his secretary, a fundamental work on the life of Pasteur but weak from the scientific point of view.Jacques-M.-R. Nicolle Ed.

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