Louis Pasteur I Quelle Histoire - TV5 Monde

We may have already talked about the great scientist Louis Pasteur. He is known for having invented the vaccine against rage. But he has made many other discoveries. He was born on December 27, 1822 in Dole, in the Jura. His father, whom he loves very much, is a tanner craftsman. This means that he makes leather. Louis goes to school at the Collège d'Arbois, then at the Collège Royal de Besançon. He is very good at drawing. He could have become an artist, but it is towards science that he turns. Louis does not really know what he wants to do in his life. He obtains the literary degree in 1840, but finally he changes his mind and retakes a scientific baccalaureate two years later. It is the Déclic. He is accepted in a large Parisian school, the École Normale Supérieure. He is very proud. In 1847, he presents his thesis on crystallography. He studies the shape of crystals and the way the light reflects on them. After his studies, he becomes a physics teacher in Dijon. Pasteur is very authoritarian, but his students like him anyway. Rather than staying in class, he takes them to the field. You learn a lot there. In 1849, he moves to Strasbourg where he teaches chemistry at the university this time. One day, he meets the rector's daughter, a certain Marie Laurent. They fall in love and a few months later, he finally dares to ask her to marry him. She becomes his best collaborator. They will have five children. Unfortunately, three will die very young. In 1854, Pasteur is appointed a doyen, that is, head of the University of Lille, where he makes his first major discoveries. Starting with the one that will bear his name, pasteurization. It is a process intended to preserve food longer, in particular milk, by heating it at a temperature and for a precise duration. When you go shopping with your parents and they buy pasteurized cheese, it is made with milk that has been heated according to Pasteur's process. He issues the patent in 1865. In 1857, everyone wants to work with the great scientist. He becomes director of scientific studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. But he has no money for his research and has to set up his laboratory in the school's attic. Do you realize? In the middle of trials and errors, he multiplies the experiments and proves that the principle of spontaneous generation does not exist. Nothing is born spontaneously. Not even microorganisms, which are just too small to be seen. Pasteur was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1862. Shortly after, Emperor Napoleon III calls for his rescue, because a disease ravages silkworm farms. However, in the south of France, a lot of silk is made, a precious fabric whose thread is produced by a small worm, in great danger. Pasteur therefore goes to Alès, in the Seine, and finds the solution. The silkworms are saved. From that date on, he becomes passionate about animal diseases. In the 1880s, he fights the chicken's cholera and the disease of coal in sheep, two diseases that cannot be cured and that destroy livestock. We can't do anything about it, lament the poor farmers. But one day, Pasteur has a brilliant idea. Inoculate, transmit, in small quantities, the disease, to strengthen the body's ability to defend itself. This is the principle of vaccination. It saves a lot of animals. Now, we have to think of men. As these vaccines against cholera and coal have worked well on animals, Pasteur hopes to find a vaccine against rage, this terrible disease caused by a virus. He first does experiments on rabbits and dogs. Is it time to switch to men? he wonders. One day, a little boy arrives in his laboratory accompanied by his mother. Joseph Mester has been bitten by an enraged dog. He may die. So the scientist starts and... It's a success! Joseph is saved! The news spreads very quickly. Pasteur has found a vaccine against rage. As it is a deadly and widespread disease, people come from everywhere to get vaccinated. The laboratory is far too small for everyone. We have to find a solution. Pasteur launches an international subscription. And with the money raised, he builds a large institute dedicated to vaccination, training and research. It is the Pasteur Institute, inaugurated on November 14, 1888. Soon, it will be in the whole world. Pasteur is an old man now. He has health problems. He has had several strokes. It is very serious. He survives, continues his research, but must slow down. Tired, he died on September 28, 1895 in Villeneuve-les-Temps, near Paris. The President of the Republic, Félix Faure, organizes national funerals. What an honor! He even offers his family, who refuse, to let him enter the Pantheon. He is finally buried in a crypt of his dear institute.