Pasteur is now a household name throughout the world as he bestowed some of the greatest benefits of science. He discovered bacteria in fermentation and put medical science on the track of many diseases. Lister was able to do his great work in antiseptics because of Pasteur's discovery of germs in the air. He relieved the world of diseases like anthrax, hydrophobia and rabies. Many lives have been saved through the pioneer work of this great chemist and extraordinarily simple man, Louis Pasteur.

Louis Pasteur was born on 27 December 1822 at Dole in France. His father was a tanner but earlier, he had served in Napoleon's army. When Louis was a young lad, no one could have guessed what he would be when he grew up. Because as a child, Louis was terribly taken up with the beauties of Nature. His favorite preoccupation was sitting and drawing all that he saw in the countryside around him. In fact, he was so talented in this field that he even tried his hand at painting the portraits of his parents and friends. At this point in time, he wasn't aware that there were much bigger things lying in wait for him.

In 1838, Louis was sent to a school in the Latin part of Paris. He felt awfully lonely and homesick there and this affected his health. He pined for the familiar smell of his father's tannery and finally returned home. However, Louis passed his Bachelor of Letters degree from the Royal College of Besancon that he had joined subsequently. For two years he taught mathematics there and then completed his Bachelor of Science degree.

Initially, Louis Pasteur started teaching Chemistry at Dijon. He had occasion to study under the famous, J.B.Dumas of Sorbonne University and under his able guidance, he got the Chair of Chemistry at Strasbourg University. There he met the Rector, M. Laurent and this meeting turned out to be a landmark event in his life. For he met and fell in love with the pretty daughter of the Rector, Marie Laurent. He married her on 29 May 1849. Marie was a devoted wife and an inspiring companion and their married life was a very happy one.

Louis Pasteur was soon given professorship and appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Lille. It was here that his experiments with fermentation started. Actually, he happened to visit a brewery where he was asked to explain why some beer remains inferior while others are of comparatively better quality. He was taken to two vats containing beer of varying qualities; the first had good beer in it and the second poor quality beer. Apparently, there seemed no reason why one was different from the other, till Pasteur noticed something that no one had noticed before. He saw that the bubbles formed from the yeast in the "good" vat were spherical while those in the "bad" vat were elongated. This seemed to be the vital difference! He felt that there must be varying stuff used in both the vats. However, that was not the reason for the difference in quality; it was because of the change, which had come in the vat due to contact with the outside air. The organisms that caused fermentation had come from the atmosphere and were external.

This observation was a turning point. It proved that there were germs in the atmosphere itself and that inorganic matter, as was earlier believed, did not produce them. He even carried out a series of complicated experiments-like the filtration of air on high altitudes-to prove his point that air was not pure and that it bred germs. (In this way he exploded the myth that there is spontaneous generation of germs in non-living things.) This discovery naturally resulted in a major change in people's daily lives. This was that Pasteur strongly advocated that milk should be boiled very well before consumption as boiling killed all the germs present. This process of boiling milk to kill germs subsequently got its name from Pasteur: it is called Pasteurization.

Pasteur's name and fame spread. Practitioners of medicine took into account the fact that there are germs present in the air and tried to keep wounds covered. In this way Pasteur's discovery saved millions from the horrifying results of septicemia. He was acclaimed widely as a chemist and his theory put into practice by eminent people like Lord Lister. The government asked him to investigate a disease that seemed to be afflicting silkworms and was having an adverse effect on the production of silk. Pasteur succeeded in isolating the germs that caused it and also found a way of preventing the disease.

In 1867, Pasteur suffered a stroke but despite ill health, carried on with his work. By now he had become a professor of Chemistry at Sorbonne and soon after this he published his paper on fermentation. One by one, he made progress in the field of bacteriology. After silkworms, he turned his attention to chicken cholera and managed to find a remedy for the disease by injecting fowl with an isolated strain of the germ of same sickness. He also made invaluable contribution to the treatment of another dreaded illness, anthrax, which affected both cattle and human beings. Thus his discoveries saved not only the animal world but also the human race.

But his greatest contribution to the human race was still to come. There's a horrible disease called hydrophobia or rabies, which is caused from the bite of a mad dog. This disease was fatal as no one ever survived it. The affected person generally went mad first and suffered terrible bouts of thirst. This gradually led to a severe reaction to all liquids, especially water. The person bitten by a mad dog, in other words, really suffered till death finally claimed him.

Louis Pasteur now concentrated on rabies and how to prevent death due to rabies. He kept a horde of mad dogs so as to collect their saliva and carry out experiments. Working with these creatures, Pasteur exposed himself to terrible risks, but he was not scared. Finally, he discovered a serum that cured bitten dogs when it was injected into them. But what bothered Pasteur was whether the same treatment would work on human beings. Rabies was a very common phenomenon and thousands all over France were losing their lives because of it. Then one day, a child bitten by a dog was brought to Louis Pasteur. He was badly bitten and there seemed no hope of his survival. Pasteur decided to try out his experiment on him. For nine days, he injected this child with different serums, all isolated from the germ causing hydrophobia. Everyone was tense about the outcome. Would the child, whose name was Joseph Meister, live? Or would a terrible, torturous death claim him finally? Everyone waited with bated breath.

One, two, then three weeks passed and the boy showed no signs of the awful disease. Not only that, he seemed to be improving day by day and by the end of three months, Joseph was perfectly cured! This was a minor miracle, created by the great scientist who had worked tirelessly for it. Honors were heaped upon him. He was offered the chair of Academie Francaise, and on 27 December 1892 his jubilee was celebrated in Paris.

Louis Pasteur remained simple at heart despite the name and fame that came his way. He died on 27 September 1895 but his name has been written forever in the annals of science and medicine. But the greatest honor that was accorded to him was that the people of France, when they were asked to vote in this field, declared Pasteur to be the greatest man that France has ever produced!