Pasteur

Pasteur, Louis, was born in 1822, and educated at Besancon, the Ecole Normale, and the Sorbonne, where in 1867 he became professor of chemistry. As early as 1856 he had received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society for his researches in connection with the polarisation of light. He discovered the existence of a microorganism in impure tartrate of lime, and showed that other fermentations were due to similar living substances. He also turned his attention to diseases of silkworms, and investigated the fermentations of beer and wine. For these experiments and the practical remedies which he proposed as their outcome, Pasteur was in 1874 awarded an annuity of 12,000 francs by the French Assembly. Subsequently he made researches on the subject of hydrophobia, and suggested inoculation as a cure. Many cases were treated by him with success. His experiments in the phenomena of putrefaction confirmed the doubt as to the possibility of the demonstration of the theory of spontaneous generation. In 1882 Pasteur was chosen a member of the Academie Francaise, and four years later the Pasteur Institute was established in Paris. He died in 1895.