The fact that cheese, cream and other products important for human life are made from pasteurized milk and may not be suitable for food for a short time is known to every schoolchild today. But few people know that we owe such a discovery to the brilliant French scientist Louis Pasteur, whose biography will be considered in this article.
The process of pasteurization was invented by the French microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur many years ago, he was already a respected scientist during his lifetime. He discovered that microbes are responsible for the souring of alcohol, and in pasteurization bacteria are destroyed by heating. His work led him and his team to develop the anthrax and rabies vaccine. He is known for many achievements and discoveries, for example, modern medicine owes him fundamental developments in the field of maintaining and developing immunity. In the course of many years of experiments, he managed to develop vaccines against various animal diseases, and his rabies vaccinations saved the lives of many people even then.
Biography of Louis Pasteur: childhood
Louis Pasteur, the third of five children, was born on December 27, 1822 in the French town of Dole, where he lived with his parents and siblings for three years. After the family moved, he grew up and studied in the city of Arbois. In his early school years, Louis Pasteur, whose biography we are considering, showed at first an unexpressed talent in the field of scientific subjects, but rather an artistic one, because he spent a lot of time writing portraits and landscapes. He studied diligently and attended school, then was busy studying at the college in Arbois for a while before moving on to the Royal College in Besançon.
Education of the future great scientist
Every year, Louis Pasteur, whose biography is discussed in this article, increased his knowledge. As a result, his academic success did not go unnoticed, which is why he soon began teaching at the Higher Normal School in Paris. He received a Bachelor of Arts (1840) and a Bachelor of Science (1842) from the Royal College of Besançon and a Doctor of Science (1847) from the École Normale in Paris.
Pasteur spent several years studying and teaching at the Dijon Lyceum. In 1847, Louis received his doctorate in natural sciences, for which he prepared two dissertations in the chemical and physical fields. During his stay in Paris, he attended many lectures at the Sorbonne, especially sitting up for a long time in chemistry classes.
First discoveries in chemistry
Even during his studies, Pasteur conducted several experiments to study the crystal structure and activity of tartaric acid. In 1849, a scientist was trying to solve a problem regarding the nature of tartaric acid, a chemical found in wine fermentation deposits. He used the rotation of polarized light as a means to study crystals. When polarized light passed through the tartaric acid solution, the tilt angle of the light plane rotated. Pasteur noticed that another compound called tartaric acid is also found in wine fermentation products and has the same composition as tartaric acid. Most scientists assumed that the two compounds were identical. However, Pasteur noticed that tartaric acid did not rotate plane polarized light. He determined that although these two compounds have the same chemical composition, they still have different structures.
Looking at tartaric acid under a microscope, Pasteur discovered two different types of tiny crystals. Although they looked almost the same, they were actually mirror images of each other. He separated these two types of crystals and began to study them carefully. When polarized light passes through them, the scientist saw that both crystals rotate, but in the opposite direction. When both crystals are in a liquid, the effect of polarized light does not differ. This experiment established that studying the composition alone is not enough to understand how a chemical behaves. Structure and form are also importantthis led the researcher to the field of stereochemistry.
Academic career and scientific achievements
Initially, Pasteur planned to become a science teacher, as he was greatly inspired by the knowledge and abilities of Professor Dumas, whose lectures he attended at the Sorbonne. For several months he worked as a professor of physics at the Lyceum in Dijon, then in early 1849 he was invited to the University of Strasbourg, where he was offered the position of professor of chemistry. Already from the first years of his work, Pasteur took an active part in intensive research activities, developed professionalism in himself and soon began to enjoy a well-deserved reputation as a chemist in the scientific world.
Louis Pasteur's biography (in English Louis Pasteur) specifically mentions the year 1854, when he moved to Lille, where a department of chemistry was opened just a few months ago. It was then that he became the dean of the department. At the new place of work, Louis Pasteur showed himself to be an extremely innovative teacher, he tried to teach students, focusing primarily on practice, which was greatly helped by the new laboratories. He also implemented this principle as director of scientific work at the Higher Normal School in Paris, a position he took in 1857. There he continued his pioneering work and made some rather bold experiments. He published the results of his research at that time in the journal of the Higher Normal School, the creation of which was initiated by himself. In the sixties of the XIX century, he received a lucrative order from the Frenchgovernment on silkworm research, which took him several years. In 1867, Louis Pasteur was called to the Sorbonne, where he taught as a professor of chemistry for several years.
Successful chemical discoveries and biography of Louis Pasteur
In addition to his distinguished academic career, Louis Pasteur made a big name for himself in the field of chemical discoveries. Already in the first half of the 19th century, scientists knew about the existence of the smallest living beings in the products of wine fermentation and during the souring of food. Their exact origin, however, was not yet fully known. But Louis Pasteur, in the course of various experiments in his laboratory, found out that these organisms enter the products through the air, cause various processes there, and also cause all kinds of diseases, and they can exist there without oxygen. Pasteur called them microorganisms or microbes. Thus he proved that fermentation is not a chemical but a biological process.
Practical benefits of Pasteur's scientific discoveries
His discovery quickly spread among specialists, and also found its place in the food industry. The scientist began to look for ways to prevent the fermentation of wine, or at least slow down this process. Louis Pasteur, whose biography is known today to every scientist, found out in the course of his research that bacteria are destroyed when heated. He continued the experiments and found that by briefly heating to a temperature55 degrees Celsius and then instant cooling can kill bacteria and at the same time get the characteristic taste of the wine. So the chemist developed a new method of short heating, which today is called "pasteurization". Today it is widely used in the food industry to preserve milk, products made from it, as well as vegetables and fruit juices.
Medical work
In the seventies of the 19th century, Louis Pasteur, whose biography and achievements are known to every schoolchild today, devoted himself to developing a method that is today known as immunization. He first focused his research on chicken cholera, a contagious disease that is deadly to humans. Working with experimental pathogens, he found that the antibodies formed by the animals helped to withstand the disease. His research helped develop vaccines against other deadly diseases such as anthrax and rabies in the coming years.
An important breakthrough in the field of medicine occurred because of the scientist's idea of vaccination against rabies, which he developed in 1885 during his work with rabbits. The first patient to be saved in this way was a small boy who was infected by the bite of a rabid dog. Because Pasteur had administered the vaccine before the disease even entered the brain, the little patient survived. The Pasteur vaccine made him famous internationally and earned him a reward of 25,000 francs.
Private life
In 1849 Louis Pasteur, biography and photowho is considered in this article, met in Strasbourg with Anne Marie Laurent, the daughter of the rector of the university, and married her in the same year. In a happy marriage, five children were born, of which only two survived to adulthood. The death of his nine-year-old daughter Jeanne, who died of typhus, prompted the scientist to study later and vaccination against this terrible disease.
The sunset of the great explorer
The biography of Louis Pasteur (in French Louis Pasteur) is rich in historical events and discoveries. But no one is completely immune from disease. Since 1868, the scientist was partially paralyzed due to a severe cerebral stroke, but he was able to continue his research. He celebrated his 70th birthday at the Sorbonne, where a number of prominent scientists took part, including the British surgeon Joseph Lister. During this time his condition worsened and he died on September 28, 1895. The biography of Louis Pasteur in English and in many others is now available for study by his descendants.
