Louis Pasteur Early Life

What was Louis Pasteur early life like?

Young Louis Pasteur landed a post as professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg. Louis Pasteur fell in love with a young woman named Marie Laurent, the daughter of the university's rector, and in only two weeks time he proposed. As was customary in those days, Louis Pasteur first wrote to her father, saying:

"My father is a tanner at Arbois. My sisters help him in his business and in the house, taking the place of my mother whom we have had the misfortune to lose last May. My family is comfortably off but not rich. As for myself, I have long ago resolved to surrender to my sisters the whole share of the inheritance, which would eventually be mine. I have therefore no fortune. All that I possess is good health, good courage and my position in the university. I plan to devote my life to chemical research with - I hope - some degree of success. With these humble assets I beg to submit my suit for your daughter's hand."

Louis Pasteur and his love life

The rector turned the matter over to his daughter, whose response was lukewarm at best. But Louis Pasteur put his Will-Work - Success theory into operation and took his case next to Marie's mother and finally to Marie herself. Louis Pasteur begged her not to judge him too hastily, saying,

"Beneath this cold, shy and scarcely pleasing exterior, there is a heart full of affection."

Louis Pasteur and his marriage to Marie Laurent - a happy family

Marie was finally won over and agreed to marry him. In spite of the fact that Louis Pasteur was late for his own wedding because he was in the middle of an experiment, the marriage lasted forty-seven happy years and produced five children.

Louis Pasteur 's most dramatic discovery

When Louis Pasteur was 32, Pasteur became dean of sciences at a new university in Lille, where he would make one of his earliest and most dramatic discoveries. The discovery resulted from a problem with beer. A manufacturer in Lille complained to Louis Pasteur that his alcohol often became contaminated in the fermentation process. Louis Pasteur was losing money and he didn't know what to do about it. Louis Pasteur went to work, spending hours at his microscope examining the yeast that appeared during fermentation. At that time, scientists believed that yeasts were dead and consisted of nothing more than decomposing chemical substances. But suddenly Louis Pasteur had a new idea - a radically new idea. It occurred to him that yeast was not dead, but alive. And far from being a product of fermentation, it caused fermentation. It was living organisms that did it!

Over time, Louis Pasteur continued to work on this theory and to disprove the idea that yeast was decay. Louis Pasteur studied the fermentation process of beer, wine, vinegar, and milk until he could prove that fermentation was always an active, living process caused by microorganisms. These microorganisms could live with or without oxygen, and they extracted energy from the organic substance being fermented. That was how yeast, in a fermenting solution of grapes, would change the sugar in the grapes to alcohol, thus producing wine. When Louis Pasteur shifted his attention to milk, he made the discovery that milk became sour when microorganisms changed the sugar in milk, called lactose, into lactic acid. These discoveries were the beginning of modern day microbiology.