Louis Pasteur

11 Pages 2874 Words

LOUIS PASTEUR
There is a time in every man's life when he looks to his God, when he looks at his life, when he wonders how he will be remembered. It can happen with age or with tragedy or closeness of death. I am lying here at age 45, not able to feel my left side. Not knowing if this stroke that has befallen me will end my life before the mysteries that I have unlocked can be resolved. I have asked God throughout my life to be able to "...bring a little stone to the frail and ill assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed." (Vallery-Radot, 88)
Death is more familiar to me than I care to think... three of my daughters.. .my father.." I have been thinking all day of the marks of affection I have had from him. For thirty years I had been in his constant care, I owe everything to him. When I was young he kept me from bad company and instilled into me the habit of working and the most loyal and best filled life. He was far above his position (tanner) both in mind and in character. The touching part of his affection for me is that it was never mixed with ambition...and yet, I am sure that some of the success in my scientific career must have filled him with joy and pride..."(Vallery-Radot, 119)
Science...it is my life..it has brought me a deepness of pleasure that I have always known yet never realized. I remember when I was working on the tartrates, tartaric acid and racemic acid or paratartrate. Tartaric acid was known to rotate light to the right, whereas paratartrate, odly enough, did not affect light in the least. "The fortunate idea came to me to orient my crystals with reference to a plane perpendicular to the observer, and then I noticed that the confused mass of crystals of paratartrate could be divided into two groups according to the orientation of their facets of symmetry. In one group, the facet of symmetry nearer my body was inclined to my r...