16 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 



relieving suffering and saving life proclaim him one of the great- 

 est benefactors of mankind. 



Louis Pasteur was descended from a peasant family who had 

 been tillers of the soil for centuries, but whose every ambition 

 had been that their children might through thrift, industry and edu- 

 cation rise above the conditions of their parents. He was born at 

 Dole in the Department of Jura, France, on December 27, 1822 ; 

 he died at Garches, a surburb of Paris on September 28, 1895. 



Pasteur's father had been a soldier in the army of Napoleon 

 and was decorated for valor in the field, but at the time of his 

 son's birth he was following his trade as a tanner. Two years later 

 the family moved to the little town of Arbois in the same depart- 

 ment, and it was here that Louis Pasteur lived in close touch 

 with nature, attended the primary school and later entered the 

 College Communal and took classical studies. 



As a student Pasteur showed no preference for any of hi'^ 

 studies except drawing up to his thirteenth year. His crayon por- 

 traits of his mother, the mayor of Arbois, a nun, and some others 

 had caused him to be considered an artist in his family circle. The 

 fame of an artist, however, was not what his father desired for his 

 son ; his highest ambition was to see him secure in a position as 

 a professor. So great was this desire that his family in spite of 

 their poverty, decided to send him to a pension in Paris, to be 

 prepared to enter the Ecole Normale. 



Accordingly with a fellow student, he left his home circle and 

 his beloved little town of Arbois in October 1838. On reaching 

 Paris a melancholy seized him and his memories of his home at 

 Arbois were so vivid that he could not adapt himself to his new 

 surroundings and consequently he could not sleep and his languor 

 and ill health made him unfit for work. He would say, "Oh! 

 if I could only smell the odor of the tannery I should be well 

 again." 



The director of the Paris school fearing that the homesickness 

 __Qf^J3ici_iji.=>i»«s-rp«r^imishL- injure his health notified Pasteur's father, 

 who came and took his son home, where in the presence of the 

 tannery and home environment he promptly recovered and con- 

 tinued his studies with zeal for another year in the College at 

 Arbois. It is from the time of the Paris experience that Pasteur 

 showed his incredible capacity for work and his great ambition to 

 get ready to enter the Ecole Normale. Froin Besancon, where he 

 attended college after Arbois, he wrote "When once we have 

 acquired the habit of work we can no longer live without it. Be- 

 sides work is the thing upon which everything else in this world 



