60 Fun Facts About Louis Pasteur

Pasteur was born in 1822 in the town of Dole, in which part of eastern France?

The family soon moved to Arbois, where he went to school and later kept a house.

What was the trade of Pasteur's father Jean-Joseph?

The family was poor and Catholic; Louis was the third child.

As a boy Pasteur was an average student whose real interests were fishing and what?

His pastel portraits of parents, friends and neighbours survive.

Pasteur is described as having had which learning difficulties?

He entered primary school in 1831 and was never thought particularly academic.

Pasteur passed his 1842 science baccalaureate at Dijon with a mediocre grade in which subject?

It did not stop him becoming one of the century's great chemists.

Which elite Paris school did Pasteur enter in 1843, on his second attempt at the entrance exam?

He had passed the year before but withdrew because his ranking was low.

Pasteur's wife Marie Laurent was the daughter of the rector of which university, where he held a chair?

They married in 1849 and she became his scientific assistant.

Three of Pasteur's five children died in childhood of which disease?

Jeanne died at nine, Cecile at twelve; a third child, Camille, died of a liver tumour at two.

Pasteur famously said that in the field of observation, chance favours only the what?

He said it in 1854 on becoming dean of the new science faculty at Lille.

At Lille in 1854 Pasteur began the studies that made his name, on what?

A local manufacturer's trouble with souring beetroot alcohol got him started.

After the Ecole Normale 'bean revolt', which dish did Pasteur decree be served every Monday?

His authoritarian reforms provoked two serious student revolts.

When Pasteur threatened to expel any student caught smoking, how many of the school's 80 resigned?

His reforms as director of studies raised standards but made him deeply unpopular.

Pasteur's early work on tartrate crystals was the first demonstration of what?

Some historians call it his most profound and original contribution to science.

Pasteur split tartrate crystals into two mirror-image forms. How did their solutions differ?

One was dextrorotatory, the other levorotatory; the shape of the molecule was twisting the light.

Pasteur's yeast research began when a Lille manufacturer asked about souring alcohol made from what?

The manufacturer's son was one of his students.

Pasteur showed that sugar turning to alcohol was caused by what, not by chemical decomposition?

Berzelius and Liebig had argued for decomposition; Pasteur proved them wrong.

Pasteur showed that wine turned sour when a contaminating microorganism produced what?

His 1857 memoir predicted a 'lactic yeast' present whenever sugar becomes lactic acid.

The 'Pasteur effect' describes yeast fermenting less sugar when exposed to what?

He observed the lower aerobic rate in 1861.

Pasteur patented his heating process in 1865 to fight the 'diseases' of what?

Only later was pasteurisation applied to beer and milk.

Pasteur's ideas about keeping microbes out of the body inspired which surgeon's antiseptic methods?

Pasteur also urged doctors to sanitise their hands and instruments before operating.

Pasteur spent five years at Ales studying two silkworm diseases: pebrine and what?

He at first thought the two were the same disease, and only separated them in 1867.

Pebrine, the silkworm disease Pasteur fought, is now known to be caused by what?

He first took the corpuscles for a symptom, then in 1870 recognised them as the cause.

Which chemist and senator asked Pasteur in 1865 to investigate the silkworm plague?

Pasteur had attended Dumas's lectures at the Sorbonne as a student.

Which Rouen museum director was Pasteur's chief opponent in the debate over spontaneous generation?

Pouchet claimed air alone could generate life in liquids; the Academy offered a prize to settle it.

What distinctive shape of flask did Pasteur use to disprove spontaneous generation?

Dust stuck in the curving neck; broth stayed sterile until the flask was tilted.

Pasteur opened flasks of boiled broth at different altitudes. Why did fewer grow organisms high up?

The organisms, he showed, came from outside on dust, not from the liquid or the air itself.

How many francs came with the Alhumbert Prize Pasteur won in 1862 for refuting spontaneous generation?

He declared the doctrine would never recover 'from the mortal blow of this simple experiment'.

After his 1868 stroke Pasteur relied on assistants for the chicken cholera work: Emile Roux and who else?

Chamberland later secretly prepared the alternative vaccine used at Pouilly-le-Fort.

Which term did Pasteur introduce for the artificial weakening of a microbe's virulence?

Old chicken cholera cultures that failed to kill were the clue.

Pasteur believed his chicken cholera bacteria were weakened by contact with what?

Cultures kept in sealed containers, he said, never lost their virulence.

Where did Pasteur's public anthrax vaccine trial take place in May 1881?

More than 200 spectators watched the unvaccinated animals die on 2 June.

How many sheep took part in the 1881 anthrax demonstration?

Two goats and ten cattle joined them; half of each group was vaccinated.

Pasteur's notebooks show the anthrax vaccine used at the trial was actually killed with what?

He publicly called it a 'live vaccine'; the method was much like his rival Toussaint's.

Henry Toussaint, who developed an anthrax vaccine before Pasteur, was what by profession?

He also supplied Pasteur with the chicken cholera bacteria later named Pasteurella.

Pasteur gave his artificially weakened pathogens the name 'vaccines' in honour of whom?

Jenner's cowpox vaccine had used a naturally weak disease; Pasteur's were weakened in the lab.

Which German rival accused Pasteur of using impure cultures and keeping his methods secret?

Koch had shown Bacillus anthracis caused anthrax; Pasteur mentioned him only in a footnote.

Pasteur showed anthrax spores were brought to the surface of 'cursed fields' by what?

He found the bacteria in their excrement and told farmers to stop burying dead animals in the fields.

Who was the nine-year-old first treated with Pasteur's rabies vaccine on 6 July 1885?

He had been badly mauled by a rabid dog; three months later he was in good health.

How many inoculations did the boy receive over eleven days?

Each used virus that had been dried and weakened for a shorter time than the last.

Why was treating the boy a legal risk for Pasteur?

Practising doctors supervised; he was not even allowed to hold the syringe.

Which physician actually gave the rabies injections under Pasteur's supervision?

Roux, who had medical qualifications, refused to take part; Grancher later defended Pasteur before the Academy of Medicine.

Roux's rabies vaccine method grew the virus in rabbits and weakened it by drying what?

Pasteur claimed 50 dogs had been vaccinated first; his notebooks say eleven.

In 1886 Pasteur treated 350 people for rabies. How many went on to develop the disease?

Patients came from as far as the United States, including four children.

The Pasteur Institute was inaugurated in which year?

Fundraising had begun in 1887 with donations from many countries.

Which discoverer of phagocytes headed morphological microbe research at the new institute?

Roux set up the world's first course in microbiology there a year after it opened.

Pasteur's tomb beneath the Institute is decorated with mosaics in which style?

They depict his accomplishments; he had first been buried in Notre Dame.

Where was Pasteur first buried after his 1895 state funeral?

His remains were later moved to a vault beneath his institute.

Pasteur's severe 1868 stroke paralysed which part of his body?

He recovered but never again ran experiments with his own hands.

Gerald Geison's 1995 study of Pasteur's private notebooks accused him of what?

Max Perutz published a defence in The New York Review of Books.

In 1878 Pasteur told his family never to reveal what to anyone?

They stayed secret until a grandson gave them to the national library in 1964.

Which chemist claimed priority over Pasteur on microbes in yeast action and proposed the mistaken 'microzyme' theory?

The dispute lasted both men's lifetimes; alternative-medicine advocates still champion him.

In 1867 Pasteur took, and soon gave up through ill health, the Sorbonne chair in what?

The same year he got his own laboratory of physiological chemistry at the Ecole Normale.

Along with a German rival and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Pasteur is honoured as the father of which science?

He is also called the father of bacteriology, despite never having been a physician or a surgeon.

Pasteur's 1876 book Études sur la Bière dealt with the diseases of which drink?

It followed his 1866 Études sur le Vin, and his heating process was soon applied to beer and milk as well as wine.

Avenue Pasteur is one of the few streets to keep its French name in which Asian city?

Streets are named after him in localities worldwide, and the city has its own Pasteur Institute.

Pasteur's family settled in 1827 in which Jura town, where he attended secondary school?

As a boy there he drew pastels and portraits of his parents, friends and neighbours rather than shining in class.

Who donated Pasteur's long-hidden notebooks to the French national library in 1964?

Pasteur Vallery-Radot was the last surviving male descendant; the papers later fuelled accusations of scientific deception.

Which Royal Society honour did Pasteur receive in 1874 for his work on fermentation?

He had already won the Rumford Medal in 1856 for his crystal work on racemic acid and polarised light.

Pasteur began his fermentation research by repeating whose earlier work showing yeast was alive?

The opposing camp of Liebig, Wöhler and Berzelius insisted yeast was merely a product of air acting on plant juice.

In 1881 Pasteur took a seat at the Académie française left vacant by which lexicographer?

The same year he was made a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, its highest rank.