32 LOUIS PASTEUR 



many chemical factories in Europe in search for 

 this precious substance. He traveled from country 

 to country, encouraged by reports of its presence 

 in this place and that, only to find, upon investiga- 

 tion, that the reports were baseless. "I will go 

 on for ten years if need be," he wrote; but while 

 he found traces of paratartaric or raoemic acid in 

 several of the tartars he studied, it occurred only 

 in quantities too small to be of practical service. 



Then he set himself resolutely to work to pre- 

 pare it artifically, — a feat which he believed im- 

 possible; but, after numerous experiments, he 

 finally effected the transformation by keeping 

 cinchonine tartrate for several hours at a high 

 temperature. In June, 1853, he telegraphed to 

 Biot, "I transformed tartaric into racemic acid; 

 please inform MM. Dumas and Senarmont." For 

 this discovery, the Paris Pharmaceutical Society 

 awarded him a prize of 1500 francs. The Paris 

 Academy of Sciences devoted a whole sitting to his 

 discoveries, and after active efforts in his behalf 

 by his friend, Biot, he was given the Red Ribbon 

 of the Legion of Honor. "He had won it," says 

 Vallery-Radot, "not in the same way as his father 

 had, but he deserved it as fully." 



The work on molecular asymmetry, and its rela- 



