Louis Pasteur Research Paper

Louis Pasteur: Discoveries

Louis Pasteur was a remarkable man who made many life changing discoveries. Not only for his generation but for many generations to come. He started his discoveries in 1849 when he was attempting to resolve a problem concerning the nature of tartaric acid which is a chemical found in the sediments of fermenting wine. His motivation was finding out that other scientists were using the rotation of polarized light as means for studying crystals. He studied the compositions under a microscope to find out the if each rotated plane-polarized light. Pasteur discover that there were two different types of crystals. Once he separated them and had polarized light pass through each solution, he discovered that both solutions rotated but did so in opposite directions. He discovered that just studying the composition is not enough to understand how a chemical behaves, and that the structure and shape is also important. This led to the field of stereochemistry.

He invented a process where the bacteria could be removed by boiling and then cooling the liquid. This is the process today known as pasteurization, that has made huge contributions to our scientific world. The most significant discovery that Pasteur made was creating vaccines. His first discovery was he accidently exposed chickens to a form a culture that was attenuated. He observed that they became resistant to the actual virus, through being exposed. He went on onto extend his germ theory by developing causes and vaccinations for diseases such as, smallpox, cholera, TB, and anthrax. Pasteur decided to focus on rabies and when a 9-year-old boy was bitten by a rabid dog, he vaccinated them. Little to say it was a success and this gained him extreme