- Pasteur’s father, a retired sergeant and an owner of a small tannery, was almost illiterate. He dreamed of seeing his son as an educated person and tried to develop the son’s desire for studies.
- When Pasteur was not yet twenty-six years old, he had already gained fame for his research in the field of structure of crystals. His discoveries subsequently led to the development of the new scientific discipline, stereochemistry.
- In 1857, Pasteur set up a small laboratory in the attic of the school at his own expense. In this laboratory he did some of his largest discoveries in microbiology.
- At the same year, Pasteur proved that fermentation is not a chemical process (as it was accepted to think then), but a biological phenomenon. At the same time, Pasteur found organisms which may live in oxygen-free environment (known as anaerobic organisms).
- In 1864, French winemakers asked Pasteur to develop the methods for treatment of the wine diseases. Pasteur found that wine diseases are caused by various microorganisms, and each disease has a special pathogen. To destroy the “harmful” enzymes, he proposed to warm the wine at a temperature of 50-60 degrees. This method, called pasteurization, has found wide application in laboratories and in the food industry.
- In 1880, Pasteur accidentally found a way to vaccinate through the introduction of attenuated pathogens. Pasteur singled out and studied the culture of the chicken cholera pathogen. Once the culture was forgotten in the thermostat for several weeks and as a result lost the ability to kill chickens even in high doses. Pasteur suggested and then proved that the introduction of such attenuated microbial cultures may create an animal immunity to the disease.
- In 1885, Pasteur developed a method of vaccination against rabies (prepared from the dried brain of rabies infected rabbits). On July 6, 1885, a child bitten by a rabid dog two days before was brought to Pasteur, and the scientist decided to use this vaccine. As result, the boy, despite the severity of the bites, got well. A few months later, a rabies vaccine saved life of the young shepherd severely bitten by a rabid dog six days before. By March 1, 1886, 350 people had been vaccinated with success in Paris.
- Pasteur and his followers were criticized for using the vaccination method. Many scientists said that he has no right to practice medicine without a diploma of physician. Pasteur was criticized for refuting the scientific views that had existed for centuries. Moreover, Pasteur was accused that he infected and tried to kill people with his vaccination.
- Pasteur proved that all microorganisms can arise only by reproduction and thus refuted the hypothesis of spontaneous generation that had been prevailed in XIX century science.
- The Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) strongly affected the political views of Pasteur: after this war, he sent a refusal to the medical faculty of the University of Bonn, which, awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine. For the similar reasons, he refused the Prussian award and even tried to sue Robert Koch because of the use of the terms microbiology and bacteriology.
- In 1886, Louis Pasteur was awarded the Order of St. Anne with diamonds by the Russian Tsar Alexander III of Russia for the recovery from rabies of a group of peasants bitten by a rabid wolf in the Smolensk province. The first Pasteur station outside France for vaccination was opened in Russia (in Odessa), and Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1908 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine) became the first Russian employee of Pasteur.
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