All About Louis Pasteur

Pasteur, Louis (1822-1895) French chemist who studied the effect of tartaric acid on polarized light. Under a microscope in 1848, he discovered that there were two types of tartrate crystals which were mirror images of each other. This contradicted Mitscherlich who had observed only a single type of crystal. It was later found that Pasteur had serendipitously prepared his crystals in a particular way which would produce large crystals of both isomers. He separated the two …

…temperature of a chicken to 37° C and found it to be susceptible to anthrax. Then, drawing from the work of Jenner, Pasteur heated anthrax germs and inoculated 25 sheep. When 50 sheep were then injected with anthrax, all 25 control sheep died while all inoculate sheep survived. Therefore, Pasteur demonstrated that the weakened anthrax lost its virulence but still could confer immunity. Pasteur termed this technique "vaccination," and applied it to chicken cholera and rabies.