Term Papers on The Life Of LOUIS PASTEUR

Term Paper Title	The Life Of LOUIS PASTEUR
# of Words	1213
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.85

The Life of LOUIS PASTEUR

Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822, in Dôle,  a small  town in France. He grew in a humble family and his  father was  a tanner. He graduated in 1840 from the College of  Arts  at Besancon  and entered the prestigious Ecole  Namale  Supervieure, Paris, to work for his doctorate degree. He chose for his studies the then obscure science of crystallography, which was to have  a great influence on his career.
Pasteur entered  the  scientific  world   as  a    professor  of physics  at the Lycee of Tournon  and started his  research on  the optical   properties of  crystals  of  tartaric acid salts. He  found  the  two  forms  of this acid which could  rotate  the  plane  of polarization  of  light, one to the right and the  other  to  the left. This was his first important discovery in  crystallography, the  phenomenon of optical isomers. Paradoxically it incited  him to  abandon  the  field. But it won the  acclaim  of  the  French Academy  and Britain's Royal Society. Thus Pasteur became  famous at the age of 26.
     Pasteur soon began researching the complexities of bacteriology.  The prevalent theory of life at the time was spontaneous generation which states that certain forms of life such as flies, worms, and mice can develop from non-living matter such as mud and decaying fish.  Pasteur disproved this theory with a simple experiment. He showed that microorganisms would grow in sterilized broth only if the broth was first exposed to air containing spores, or reproductive cells. His findings led to the development of the cell theory of the origin of living matter which states that all life originates from preexisting living material.
In 1849, Pasteur  became professor of chemistry at the  University of  Strasbourg, where he began studying fermentation, a type of chemical breakdown of substances by microbes.  He served the rest of his  career  as Dean  of  Sciences  at the University of Lille.  Soon  after  his arrival at Lille, Pasteur was asked to solve the problems of  the local industries,  vinegar and silk manufacture.
A producer of vinegar from beet juice wanted to know why the  product  was  sometimes  spoilt.  On  examining  the   juice microscopically,  Pasteur  observed that  the  contaminant,  amyl alcohol,  was optically active. This gave clear evidence that  it was  produced  by  a living organism.  Pasteur  then  proposed  a biological  interpretation  of the process  of  fermentation.  He demonstrated that when no contamination by living contagion  took place,  the process of fermentation or putrefaction did not  take place.  Thus the celebrated techniques of  Pasteurization,  came into  being,  it  could  not only  preserve  wine  and  milk  but drastically cut inflation in the surgeon's operating table. Today pasteurization follows closely the early techniques of Louis Pasteur.  In the case of milk pasteurization, the milk is heated to 161°F  for 15 seconds followed by a rapid cooling to 50°F or lower.  This process removes any unwanted bacteria, but also kills any beneficial bac!
teria and reduces some of the nutritive property of milk.
The  Franco-Prussian  War opened an avenue to  press  his microbial  theory of infection, he got the grudging agreement  of the  military  medical corps to sterilize instruments  and  steam bandages.  As a result, thousands of lives were saved.  In  1873, Pasteur  was  elected  to  the French Academy  of  Medicine,  a spectacular achievement for a person without a medical degree.
Pasteur  was now ready to move from the simpler forms  of   life  in  the  microbial  world to the  diseases  of  the  higher animals.  The opportunity came through a devastating outbreak  of anthrax,  a  killer  plague of sheep in 1876.  Pasteur  tried  to produce pure cultures, his objective was to fight the disease and not ju...

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