432. THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



Stood when a scientist arose who as the result of unchallengeable experiments 

 clinched the matter once and for all and thereby entirely changed the course 

 of microbiology. 



Louis Pasteur was born in i8ix at Dole, a town in the ancient province 

 of Franche-Comte. His parents belonged to the industrial class; his father 

 had served as a non-commissioned officer under Napoleon and after his de- 

 mobilization had entered the tanning trade, moving his business from one 

 place to another. Young Louis attended the country school and afterwards 

 studied, under circumstances of privation and with numerous interruptions, 

 in Paris. He was mostly interested in the natural sciences and the teaching 

 profession was his aim in life. He became a teacher at the gymnasium at 

 Strassburg and married a daughter of the rector of the school. There he 

 carried out his first chemical work, which procured his removal to the then 

 newly-founded University of Lille, where he became professor of chemistry 

 in 1855. Four years later he was called to Paris, to the Ecole Normale. At 

 the same time he was carrying on his investigations into the fermentation 

 process, which at once brought him world-wide fame, and after that, success 

 and honours came to him rapidly. It was given to him in a specially high 

 degree to make the results of his investigations of practical use to mankind, 

 whether it was a question of inventing a method of preserving food, combat- 

 ing the diseases of domestic animals, or treating rabies, which had hitherto 

 been considered incurable. This last-mentioned discovery made him particu- 

 larly popular: through an international fund there was founded in 1889 an 

 institute for the purpose of investigating those fields of research to which 

 he had devoted himself, which bore his name and to the management of 

 which he afterwards devoted all his energies. Previously pupils had already 

 flocked to his laboratory from all parts of the world; many of them have 

 themselves won great fame. Nevertheless, this brilliant career had certainly 

 not been entirely free from shadows. In his political views Pasteur was a 

 conservative and a warm partisan of the French Empire, and moreover a 

 strictly faithful Catholic. This caused him a good deal of unpleasantness, 

 owing to radical opposition, producing an atmosphere that is even reflected 

 in the scientific polemics waged against him. Ultimately, however, these 

 hostile voices were silenced, and the more easily as he never meddled in 

 political questions. But instead he suff'ered in his old age from increasing ill- 

 health; as early as in 1868 he had had a paralytic stroke which impaired the 

 use of one of his arms, but which did not succeed in preventmg him from 

 continuing his activities with as great success as before; gradually, however, 

 his powers declined and he passed peacefully away in 1895. His name lives 

 in his work and in the "Pasteur Institutes" which have been established in 

 all civilized countries; he is without doubt one of the greatest scientists of 

 his century. 



