Louis Pasteur

4 Pages 893 Words

Pasteur served on the faculty of science of Dijon for a brief period and then was transferred to Strasbourg University where he continued his studies on molecular asymmetry. In Strasbourg, Pasteur had the immense good fortune to meet and marry the University Rector's daughter Marie Laurent, who was to be his devoted wife, mother and scientific helpmate through the remainder of his life.

In 1854 Pasteur was appointed Dean and professor of chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences in Lille, France. Lille was an industrial town with a number of distilleries and factories. The Minister of Public Instruction was not completely sold on "science for science's sake". He reminded university faculty that (and here I quote the Minister's words) "whilst keeping up with scientific theory, you should, in order to produce useful and far reaching results, appropriate to yourselves the special applications suitable to the real wants of the surrounding country."

Pasteur, in contrast to other faculty, needed no prodding. He enjoyed taking his students on tours of the factories and was quick to advise the managers that he was available to help solve their problems. In the summer of 1856, M. Bigot, father of one of his students in chemistry, called upon Pasteur to help him overcome difficulties he was having manufacturing alcohol by fermentation of beetroot. Often, instead of alcohol, Bigot's fermentations yielded lactic acid.

To better appreciate the discoveries to follow, we should understand what was believed at that time about alcoholic fermentation. Chemistry was emerging as a true science, freed from the pseudoscience of the alchemist. The mysterious chemical processes of living animals were slowly being unraveled in strictly chemical terms. Lavoisier had shown that chemical combustion in living animals was quantitatively identical to that occurring in a furnace. Lavoisier also showed that sugar, the starting product of fermentation, could be brok...