Pasteur and his work : being a lecture delivered before the Windsor and Eton Scientific Society, on Thursday, December 5th, 1889 / by Arthur E. Shipley.

  • Shipley, Arthur Everett, 1861-1927.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pasteur and his work : being a lecture delivered before the Windsor and Eton Scientific Society, on Thursday, December 5th, 1889 / by Arthur E. Shipley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    facade is ornamented by a plate bearing these words written in letters of gold— Here was Born, Louis Pasteur, December 27th, 1822. When he was two years old, his family, which consisted of his father, mother, and himself, moved to the neighbouring town of Arbois, where his father had bought a small tan-yard. In this small country town Pasteur passed his childhood and youth, attending the communal school, and repeating to his father every evening, the lessons he had leamt there during the day. When still a boy his attention was directed to science, but it was not until 1843, when he entered the Ecole Normale at Paris (having secured the -1th place in the competitive entrance examination), that he was able to gratify his passion in this direction. Here his taste for chemistry received full recognition, and under the guidance of the distinguished chemists Balard and Dumas, at that time professors at Paris, he made great progress in his favourite subject. Whilst still a student at the Ecole Normale, Pasteur commenced an investigation in the domain of molecular physics. His attention had been drawn to the behaviour of the crystals of certain -alts of tartaric and para-tartaric acid with regard to their power of influencing the plane of polarization. It would be outside our province to consider in detail this piece of research, but I may mention that as a result of this series of investigations, Pasteur formulated the view that the ultimate molecule of the organic world differs from that of the inorganic by possessing the property of acting on polarized light. This view is, I believe, still held by Pasteur, though it h;is hitherto failed to meet with general acceptance. In the midst of these researches he was nominated assistant to the professor of chemistry at Strasburg, and here he earned on his investigations with so much ardour, that on the morning of his marriage with the daughter of the Rector of the Strasburg Academy, it was found necessary to send a messenger round to the Laboratory to remind him of the ceremony about to take place in the neighbouring church. About this time a German manufacturer of* chemicals, drew Pasteur* a attention to the fact that the contents of his vats of impure