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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Arbois. His father, an old soldier, was anxious that his son should 

 be a professor in a communal college. The young man took a course 

 in philosophy at Besangon, where at eighteen he began to teach. Three 

 years later he had prepared himself for the normal school, but delayed 

 entrance till 1844, in order that he might enter with higher rank. In 

 the normal school he specialized in chemistry, under Balard and De 

 Lafosse of that school, and under Dumas of the Sorbonne. The Sor- 

 bonne made him doctor of science in 1847. Leaving the normal school 

 in 1848, he accepted a professorship of physics in 'the Lycee of Dijon, 

 where he gained fame by his researches into the structure of crystals. 

 In 1854 he was made professor of chemistry at Strasbourg, dean of the 



L'Institut Pasteur. 



faculty of science of Lille in 1854, director of studies in the normal 

 school in 1857, professor of geology, physics and chemistry in the school 

 of fine arts in 1865, professor of chemistry in the Sorbonne in 1867. 

 These dates indicate the rapidity of bis promotion and the nature of his 

 activity. For several years prior to his appointment to a professorship 

 in the Sorbonne, he had studied infusoria and had reached conclusions 

 directly opposed to those held by Pouchet, the director of the Museum 

 of Natural History, at Eouen. Pasteur was confident that infusoria 

 were from germs, or microbes, and that they fixed themselves in sub- 



