French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur was born #OTD in 1822
He is renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the last of which was named after him. His research in chemistry led to remarkable breakthroughs in the understanding of the causes & preventions of diseases, which laid down the foundations of hygiene, public health & much of modern medicine.
A French national hero at age 55, in 1878 Pasteur discreetly told his family to never reveal his laboratory notebooks to anyone. His family obeyed, & all his documents were held & inherited in secrecy. Finally, in 1964 Pasteur's grandson & last surviving male descendant, Pasteur Vallery-Radot, donated the papers to the French national library. Yet the papers were restricted for historical studies until the death of Vallery-Radot in 1971. The documents were given a catalogue number only in 1985.
In 1995, Gerald L. Geison published an analysis of Pasteur's private notebooks in his The Private Science of Louis Pasteur, and declared that Pasteur had given several misleading accounts and played deceptions in his most important discoveries. Max Perutz published a defense of Pasteur in The New York Review of Books. Based on further examinations of Pasteur's documents, French immunologist Patrice Debré concluded in his book Louis Pasteur that, in spite of his genius, Pasteur had some faults.
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