Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist best known for his work in pasteurization, vaccination, and his theories on crystallography. He was born in Dole, France, in 1822, but grew up in the town of Arbois. He made his home there later also, a house which contained his laboratory and became later the site of the Pasteur Museum. He married Marie Laurent, the daughter of the rector of the University of Strausborg where he taught. They had five children, but only two survived to adulthood. Three of his daughters died of typhoid fever, a tragedy that inspired his work with vaccinations. He died at the age of 72 from a series of strokes in 1895.


  • Louis Pasteur - The National Library of Medicine: Introduces an exhibit of Louis Pasteur and gives a brief biography and synopsis of scientific accomplishments throughout his life.
  • Accomplishments: The life of Louis Pasteur presented in a timeline from his birth, throughout his jobs, his marriage, his accomplishments, until his death.
  • Louis Pasteur: Biography of Louis Pasteur presented by UCLA giving a brief overview of his scientific accomplishments.
  • Louis Pasteur: Biography of Louis Pasteur and thorough overview of his many scientific achievements.


Molecular Asymmetry

  • Pasteur Foundation: Explains Pasteur’s work in crystallography and how it contributed to the discovery and developments in molecular asymmetry.
  • European Review: Explores Pasteur’s discovery of asymmetry at the molecular level in biology within amino acids, ribose, glucose, and glyceraldehydes.


  • Physiological Theory of Fermentation: Pasteur’s essay on the relationship between oxygen and yeast; he relates his experiments with fermentation and the conclusions drawn from them.
  • Louis Pasteur: Further experiments and thoughts on fermentation using beer and its yeasty components as a basis to Pasteur’s thoughts and experiments.

Spontaneous Generation

  • Spontaneous Generation: An essay showing how many people once believed that spontaneous generation did, indeed, occur, based on observation; the essay continues to various scientific experiments, most notably, Pasteur’s which disproves the possibility of spontaneous generation.
  • Chapter 5.6: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): Details the disproval of spontaneous generation by Pasteur as well as explains his other theories on germs and their effects on organisms.

“Pasteurization” Techniques

  • Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Safer and Healthier Foods: Article regarding food safety and developments through the years; it focuses a good deal on Louis Pasteur’s pasteurization process, which prevented a large amount of food-borne illnesses.
  • Pasteur: Describes how Pasteur developed the idea for pasteurization, what caused him to come to the conclusion that heating a product would keep it from spoiling, where, and when he conducted his experiments.

Human Infectious Diseases

  • Bryant University - Pasteur: Brief introduction to Pasteur that credits him for the discovery of the bacteria responsible for staphylococcus, streptococcus, and pneumococcus.
  • New Age Publishers: An article on microbiology, Louis Pasteur is discussed various times, and at length, for his contributions in the field and discovery of bacteria that causes human illnesses, which helped develop medicine and vaccinations against such illnesses.

Animal Infectious Diseases

  • Louis Pasteur: In part, describes Louis Pasteur’s role in discovering the infectious agents that were affecting silkworms in the French industry, and his role in resolving the disease the silkworms were inflicted by.
  • Louis Pasteur - Major Achievements: Examines Pasteur’s works in microbiology and gives an overview of his accomplishments with anthrax in sheep and chicken cholera.

Treatment of Rabies

  • Louis Pasteur: This page focuses on many different aspects of Louis Pasteur’s scientific accomplishments, but its segment on his rabies research is very in-depth and informative, detailing his experiments and resulting achievement.
  • Rabies Vaccines: Introduces Pasteur’s vaccine for rabies, how and when it was developed, and further explains rabies vaccinations of today.

The Pasteur Institute

  • The Pasteur Institute: An article regarding the Pasteur Institute, its history, its distinctive and prestigious features, and its many accomplishments.
  • The Pasteur Institute: Brief introduction to the Pasteur Institute.

Impact on Science

 Quotations Pages of Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was a scientist who, undoubtedly, made an incredible impact on the world of microbiology and chemistry. Because of his thorough experiments and background checks on germs and their effect on fermentation, great break-throughs were made in the fields of preventing and curing human disease. He coined the phrase “vaccination,” and developed a vaccination for rabies and anthrax. His process of boiling liquids to rid them of bacteria came to be known as pasteurization and is still known to be necessary in much food processing today. He is arguably one of the most significant scientists of his time.