Louis Pasteur: biography and achievements

The fact that cheese, cream and other importantthe life of a person products are made from pasteurized milk and may not be suitable for food for a short time, today every schoolboy knows. But very few people know that this discovery we owe to the brilliant French scientist Louis Pasteur, whose biography will be considered in this article.

The process of pasteurization came up with Frenchmicrobiologist 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 when pasteurized, bacteria are destroyed by heating. His work led him and his team to create an inoculation against anthrax and rabies. He is known for many achievements and discoveries, for example, modern medicine owes him fundamental research in the field of maintaining and developing immunity. During many years of experiments, he managed to develop vaccines against various animal diseases, and his vaccinations against rabies saved lives for many people even then.

Biography of Louis Pasteur: childhood

Louis Pasteur, the third of five children, was born on the 27thDecember 1822 in the French city of Dole, where he lived with his parents, brothers and sisters for three years. After moving the family, he grew up and studied in the city of Arbois. In the early school years, Louis Pasteur, whose interesting facts of 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 spent some time studying in Arbois College before moving to King's College in Besançon.

Education of the future great scientist

Every year, Louis Pasteur, whose biographyconsidered in this article, has increased its knowledge. As a result, his academic success did not go unnoticed, which is why he soon began to teach 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 Besancon, as well as a Ph.D. (1847) from Ecole Normale in Paris.

Pasteur spent several years studying andteaching in Dijon Lyceum. He received his doctorate in 1847 in the field of natural sciences, for which he prepared two dissertations in the chemical and physical sciences. During his stay in Paris he attended a lot of lectures at the Sorbonne, especially during long studies in chemistry.

The first discoveries in the field of chemistry

During his studies Pasteur held severalexperiments on the study of the crystal structure and the activity of tartaric acid. In 1849, the scientist tried to solve the problem of the nature of tartaric acid - a chemical found in the deposits of wine fermentation. He used the rotation of polarized light as a means for studying crystals. When the polarized light passed through a solution of tartaric acid, the angle of inclination of the plane of light rotated. Pasteur noted that another compound, called grape 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. Nevertheless, Pasteur noted that grape acid does not rotate flat-polarized light. He determined that although these two compounds have the same chemical composition, they still have different structures.

Looking at the grape acid under a microscope,Pasteur discovered the presence of two different types of tiny crystals. Although they looked almost identical, in fact they were a mirror image of each other. He separated these two types of crystals and carefully studied them. When the 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 found that just studying the composition is not enough to understand how the chemical behaves. Structure and form are also important, this led the researcher to the field of stereochemistry.

Academic career and scientific achievements

Originally Pasteur planned to become a teachernatural sciences, as he was strongly 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. From the first years of his work, Pasteur took an active part in intensive scientific research, developed professionalism and soon in the scientific world began to enjoy a well-deserved reputation as a chemist.

In the biography of Louis Pasteur (in English LouisPasteur) especially appears in 1854, when he moved to Lille, where only a few months ago the faculty of chemistry was opened. It was then that he became the dean of the department. At his new job, Louis Pasteur showed himself to be an extremely innovative teacher, he tried to teach students, focusing primarily on practice, which was largely helped by the new laboratories. This principle he also implemented as director of research at the Higher Normal School in Paris, he took this position in 1857. There he continued his pioneering work and put on some pretty bold experiments. The results of his research he published 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 favorable order from the French government to study the silkworm, 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 outstanding academic career,Louis Pasteur made himself a great name in the field of chemical discoveries. Already in the first half of the XIX century, scientists knew about the existence of the smallest living beings in wine fermentation products and with souring of food products. Their exact origin, however, was not yet known until the end. But Louis Pasteur, in the course of various experiments in his laboratory, found out that these organisms enter the air through the air, they cause various processes, 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 process, but a biological process.

Practical benefits of Pasteur's scientific discoveries

His discovery quickly spread among thespecialists, and also found its place in the food industry. The scientist began to look for ways to prevent fermentation of wine or at least to slow down this process. Louis Pasteur, whose biography is known to every scientist today, found out in the course of his research that bacteria are destroyed when heated. He continued the experiments and found out that by short-term heating to a temperature of 55 degrees Celsius, and then instant cooling, bacteria can be killed and at the same time a characteristic taste of the wine can be obtained. So the chemist developed a new method of short heating, which today is called "pasteurization." Today it is widely used in the food industry for canning milk, made from it products, as well as vegetables and fruit juices.

Work in the field of medicine

In the seventies of the XIX century, Louis Pasteur, biographyand the achievements of which are now known to every schoolboy, has devoted himself to developing a method that is today known as immunization. His research first he focused on chicken cholera, a contagious disease, deadly to humans. Working with experimental pathogens, he discovered that the antibodies formed by the animals helped sustain the disease. His research has helped in the coming years to develop vaccines against other deadly diseases, such as anthrax and rabies.

An important breakthrough in the field of medicine was due tothe idea of ​​a scientist about vaccination against rabies, which he developed in 1885 in the course of his work with rabbits. The first patient who was rescued in this way was a small boy infected with a bite of a rabid dog. Since Pasteur introduced the vaccine before the disease penetrated the brain, the small patient survived. Pasteur's vaccine made him famous internationally and brought him a reward of 25,000 francs.

Personal life

In 1849, Louis Pasteur, whose biography and photoare discussed in this article, met in Strasbourg with Ann Marie Laurent, daughter of the university rector, and in the same year married her. In a happy marriage, five children were born, of whom only two survived to adulthood. The death of his nine-year-old daughter Jeanne, who died of typhus, pushed the scientist to study later and vaccinated against this terrible disease.

Sunset great researcher

Biography of Louis Pasteur (in French LouisPasteur) is rich in historical events and discoveries. But no one is completely immune to disease. Since 1868, the scientist was partially paralyzed because of a severe cerebral stroke, but he was able to continue his studies. He celebrated his 70th birthday in the Sorbonne, where a number of prominent scientists, including the British surgeon Joseph Lister, took part. At this time, his condition worsened, and he passed away on September 28, 1895. The biography of Louis Pasteur in English and on many others is now available for study by his descendants.