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When he showed that food and wine spoiled because of contamination from invisible bacteria rather than from spontaneous generation, the modern germ theory of disease was born. Through that process, Pasteur not only refuted the theory of spontaneous generation, but he also demonstrated that microorganisms were everywhere. This showed that if air was not allowed directly into his boiled infusions, then no “living microorganisms would appear, even after months of observation.” However, importantly, if dust was introduced, living microbes appeared.

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As a result, the flask remained free of growth for an extended period. By using his now famous swan-necked flasks, which had a long S-shaped neck, he allowed air to flow in while at the same time preventing falling particles from reaching the broth during heating. Pasteur deemed one of these experiments as “unassailable and decisive” because, unlike Needham, after he sterilized his cultures, he kept them free from contamination.

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Pasteur’s response to the contest was a series of experiments, including a prize-winning 1861 essay. To settle the scientific battle, the French Academy of Sciences sponsored a contest for the best experiment to prove or disprove spontaneous generation. And importantly, his flasks allowed air to flow back in, which enabled microbial contamination. For one, the boiling time was not sufficient to kill all microbes. However, his experiment had two major flaws. After some time, microorganisms grew, and Needham claimed victory. After boiling chicken broth, he placed it in a flask, heated it, then sealed it and waited, not realizing that air could make its way back into the flask prior to sealing.

Most scientists believed that heat killed life, so Needham created an experiment to show that microorganisms could grow on food, even after boiling. While many scientists tried to disprove the theory of spontaneous generation, in 1745, English biologist John Turberville Needham believed he had created the perfect experiment favoring spontaneous generation. At the time, the scientific notion of “spontaneous generation” held that life can arise from nonliving matter, which was believed to be the culprit behind wine spoiling. It was not uncommon during Pasteur’s life for products to spoil and become bitter or dangerous to drink. Wine and beer – from fermentation to germ theoryīeer and wine were critical to the economy of France and Italy in the 1800s. These findings led Pasteur to suspect what would later be proved through molecular biology: All life processes ultimately stem from the precise arrangement of atoms within biological molecules. This chirality, or handedness, of molecules was a “ revolutionary hypothesis” at the time. This discovery became the foundation of a subdiscipline of chemistry known as stereochemistry, which is the study of the spatial arrangement of atoms within molecules. In 1848, just months after receiving his doctorate degree, Pasteur was studying the properties of crystals formed in the process of wine-making when he discovered that crystals occur in mirror-image forms, a property known as chirality. During that time, Pasteur became interested in the origins of life and worked in the field of polarized light and crystallography. Pasteur studied under the French chemist Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas. However, his story begins with chemistry.

In my assessment, Pasteur’s strongest contributions to science are his remarkable achievements in the field of medical microbiology and immunology. Library of Congress/Interim Archives via Getty Images First, a chemist

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His efforts fundamentally changed how people view infectious diseases and how to fight them via vaccines.Īn illustration of Louis Pasteur, right, supervising the administration of the rabies vaccine at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1886. Nobel Prizes, which are awarded in various fields, including physiology and medicine, are not given posthumously.ĭuring the current time of ongoing threats from emerging or reemerging infectious diseases, from COVID-19 and polio to monkeypox and rabies, it is awe-inspiring to look back on Pasteur’s legacy. Had he lived in the era of Nobel Prizes, he would undoubtedly have been deserving of one for his work. Remarkably, he also developed the rabies and anthrax vaccines and made major contributions to combating cholera.īut because he died in 1895, six years before the first Nobel Prize was awarded, that prize isn’t on his resume. He is widely credited for the germ theory of disease and for inventing the process of pasteurization – which is named after him – to preserve foods. Louis Pasteur, who lived from 1822 to 1895, is arguably the world’s best-known microbiologist. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries haven’t resulted in Nobel Prizes.

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