Author of the painting: Albert Edelfelt

Dole, France, December 27, 1822-Marnes-la-Coquette, France, September 28, 1895

Louis Pasteur was the man behind pasteurization and the rabies vaccine. He didn’t show greater interest in science during his school years, but later became professor of physics at the Lyceum in Dijon and Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Lille.

His studies on microscopic organisms led him to ensure and demonstrate that certain bacteria are the cause of fermentation and acidification. Through these studies established the pasteurization method, widely applied in the vast majority of commercial products.

Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur

By 1865 he was recognized by the French Academy of Sciences and the government commissioned him to analyze an epidemic among silkworms, finding a parasitic infection as a cause. He demonstrated the external origin of disease onset contradicting the popular theories of spontaneous generation, laying the foundation for the germ theory of infectious diseases.

In 1856 the Royal Society of London awarded him the Rumford Medal and in 1873 he entered the Académie de Médecine as an associate member. He worked on the development of vaccines against rabies after a random incident and in 1885 he successfully applied the vaccine in a child victim of a dog bite.

In 1888 the Pasteur Institute for the treatment of diseases, from which he himself was director opened. His legacy in the field of science is such that he is called “father of modern microbiology.”