1822-1895
Chemist

Education and Teaching Career. The son of a tanner, Louis Pasteur was born under humble circumstances in Dole, France. After receiving excellent preparation and encouragement in the local schools of Arbois, where his family had moved, Pasteur earned the French equivalents of B.A. (1840) and B.S. (1842) degrees at the Royal College in Besancon. In 1843 he entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he became interested in chemistry. On completion of his doctorate in 1847, Pasteur taught in Dijon, Strasbourg, and Lille. He returned to Paris in 1857, becoming director of scientific studies at the Ecole Normale Superieure.

Brewing, Fermentation, and Pasteurization. Pasteur's initial interest was crystallography (the use of a microscope to study shapes of crystals). In the late 1840s he made an important discovery—that organic molecules are asymmetrical, an insight that underlay his later work on alcoholic fermentation. While teaching in...