International Year of Chemistry 2011: Louis Pasteur in His Laboratory: Entry of Chemistry into Medicine

摘要

If an image of a scientific discipline depends on its eminent representatives, Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), a chemist by training, is the epitome of such a person. This article celebrates, through his achievement, the entry of chemistry into modern medicine. Pasteur was a graduate of école Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he later spent the years 1857 through 1867 as director of studies and where, at Rue d'Ulm, he had his laboratory. He also worked in Dijon, Strasbourg, and Lille. He was professor of chemistry at the Sorbonne from 1867 to 1875.Pasteur's first important work was a demonstration of the chirality of tartaric acid. Subsequently, he developed an interest in fermentation, a subject around which the emerging germ theory clashed with the theory of spontaneous generation. In 1859, Pasteur proved, through ingenious experiments, the existence of germs and spores in the air. The results were presented to the Academy of Science in 1862 as Memorandum on Organic Corpuscles Existing in the Atmosphere and provided major support for the germ theory. Pasteur moved on to investigate the maladies of wine, a work that led to the development of …