Chapter:II Golden era of Microbiology
Lecture : 5
Topic: Louis Pasteur’s contributions in Microbiology The work and discoveries of Louis Pasteur into three phases:
• 1847 to 1862 (Pasteur as a physicist and a chemist)
• 1862 to 1877 (Pasteur as a biologist)
• 1877 to 1887 (Pasteur as a microbiologist)
Louis Pasteur is best known for two things: Pasteurization and Vaccination. Louis Pasteur showed that fermentation was a process initiated by living organisms in a series of investigations. At the time it was thought to be caused by yeast dying and decomposing. In 1856, a local industrialist approached him about the quality problems some manufacturers of beet root alcohol were having. Pasteur readily applied his knowledge of microbes and fermentation to the wine and beer industries in France, effectively saving the industries from collapse due to problems associated with production and with contamination that occurred during export. After studying the harmful effects of microbes on foodstuffs, Louis Pasteur invented the pasteurization process in 1862. In pasteurization, liquids such as milk are heated to a temperature between 60°C and 100 °C to kill microorganisms present within them that cause them to be spoiled. Pasteurization was first used to save the French wine industries from the problem of contamination. Soon the process was also applied to milk and beer. Thus Pasteurization can be defined as the partial sterilization of a product, such as milk or wine, to make it safe for consumption and improve its keeping quality.Today pasteurization is rarely used for wines that benefit from aging, since it kills the organisms that contribute to the aging process, but is applied to many foods and beverages, particularly milk. He was the first scientist to create vaccines for fowl cholera, anthrax, and rabies. Pasteur worked with diseases such as cholera in chickens. Louis Pasteur’s first important discovery in the study of vaccination came in 1879 and was regarding the disease known as chicken cholera.. In 1888, Pasteur Institute was inaugurated in Paris for treatment of rabies and other diseases.
