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December 27, 1822
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Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France.
1841
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At nineteen Louis Pasteur earned his bachelor degree.
1842 - 1847
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Went to Ecole Normale Superieure and earned his doctor philosophy degree.
1848
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University of Strasbourg
1854 - 1857
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Started to experiment with fermenting liquids which caused him to find that yeast caused fermentation, yeast consumed the beet sugar leaving alcohol as a waste product. He went on to demonstarte that other microorganisms, bacteria in this case, cause the juice to go sour by fermenting sugar into lactic acid.
1854
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Bigo's factory used fermentation to produce alcohol from beet juice, and the owner was hopeful that the latest experiment with tartric acid could help him preserve his stock. Which caused hime to have an interest into fermentation and his first steps toward germ theroy.
1862 - 1867
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Representatives of the silk industry approached Pasteur to ask for his assistance with a problem. The silkworms on which the industry relied had been attacked by a mysterious disease; its rapid spread threatened the whole of French silk production. Pasteur accepted the challenge, though he knew nothing about silkworms. For five years he worked on silkworm diseases along with other experiments. He eventually found what was at the root of the problem: a microscopic parasite (an organism living within another organism) that was killing the silkworms and affecting their food, mulberry leaves. His solution seemed quite drastic at the time, but it too worked: destroying all the unhealthy worms and starting with new cultures. The silk industry, very important to the French economy at the time, was saved, and Pasteur's reputation grew.
1867 - 1870
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By placing bacteria-prone broths in special swan-necked vessels that could block out air, Pasteur was able to demonstrate that bacteria would grow only when air was allowed to pass through the neck of the vessel. He thus showed that it was invisible germs in the air, not spontaneous generation, that was causing the growth of bacteria on the liquids. As a further experiment, he exposed unfermented liquids to the pure mountain air of the high Alps. No new bacteria grew in this virtually germ-free environment.
1870 - 1895
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During the 1870s, Pasteur began work on human diseases. He first tackled anthrax, a potentially fatal animal disease of the skin that could be spread to humans. Building on discoveries made by German scientist Robert Koch (sometimes called the cofounder of microbiology), Pasteur succeeded in developing a vaccination that protected animals against anthrax.
Thousands of people in the nineteenth century died every year from rabies, a fatal disease of the nervous system contracted from the bite of an infected animal. After experiments failed to show any bacteria at work in rabid animals, Pasteur realized the cause was another kind of germ (later called a virus) that was too small to be detected by a microscope. Following extensive work he succeeded in creating a vaccine against rabies.
1888 - September 28, 1895
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Was director of Pasteur Institute in 1888, which he founded, until his death in Semptember 28, 1895.