Louis Pasteur

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and his extraordinary contribution to medicine and science. It is said few people have saved more lives than Pasteur. A chemist, he showed that otherwise identical molecules could exist as ‘left’ and ‘right-handed’ versions and that molecules produced by living things were always left-handed. He proposed a germ theory to replace the idea of spontaneous generation. He discovered that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease. He began the process named after him, pasteurisation, heating liquids to 50-60 C to kill microbes. He saved the beer and wine industries in France when they were struggling with microbial contamination. He saved the French silk industry when he found a way of protecting healthy silkworm eggs from disease. He developed vaccines against anthrax and rabies and helped establish immunology. Many of his ideas were developed further after his lifetime, but one of his legacies was a charitable body, the Pasteur Institute, to continue research into infectious disease.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Andrew Mendelsohn 3 episodes
  Reader in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London
• Anne Hardy 4 episodes
  Honorary Professor at the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Michael Worboys No other episodes
  Emeritus Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester

Reading list

• Science and Industry in the Nineteenth Century
  J. D. Bernal (Routledge, 2005) Google Books →
• Louis Pasteur
  Patrice Debre (trans. Elborg Forster) (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Pasteur and Modern Science
  Rene Dubos (Science Tech Publishers, 1988) Google Books →
• Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science
  Rene Dubos (Perseus Books Group, 1986) Google Books →
• Pasteur: History of a Mind
  Emile Duclaux (Cornell University Library, 2009)
• The Private Science of Louis Pasteur
  Gerald L. Geison (Princeton University Press, 1995) Google Books →
• The Pasteurization of France
  Bruno Latour (trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law) (Harvard University Press, 1988) Google Books →
• Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850-1930
  Staffan Muller-Wille and Christina Brandt (ed.) (MIT Press, 2016) Google Books →
• Louis Pasteur and the Hidden World of Microbes
  Louise Robbins (Oxford Portraits in Science, 2001) Google Books →
• The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery
  Andrew Robinson (ed.) (Thames and Hudson, 2012) Google Books →
• Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation
  Donald Stokes (Brookings Institution Press, 1998) Google Books →
• The Life of Pasteur
  Rene Vallery-Radot (Palala Press, 2016) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Microbiology
  
  8 Mar, 2007 570 Biology
• Penicillin
  
  9 Jun, 2016 610 Medicine and health
• Vitalism
  
  16 Oct, 2008 570 Biology
• Oxygen
  
  15 Nov, 2007 540 Chemistry
• Immunisation
  
  20 Apr, 2006 610 Medicine and health
• The Microscope
  
  28 Nov, 2013 500 Science
• Michael Faraday
  
  24 Dec, 2015 530 Physics
• Robert Boyle
  
  12 Jun, 2014 540 Chemistry
• Bergson and Time
  
  9 May, 2019 110 Metaphysics
• Pascal
  
  19 Sep, 2013 510 Mathematics
• Lamarck and Natural Selection
  
  26 Dec, 2003 570 Biology
• The Origins of Infectious Disease
  
  9 Jun, 2011 570 Biology
• Robert Hooke
  
  18 Feb, 2016 500 Science
• Heat
  
  4 Dec, 2008 530 Physics
• Paul Dirac
  
  5 Mar, 2020 530 Physics
• Maxwell
  
  2 Oct, 2003 530 Physics
• Aristotle’s Biology
  
  7 Feb, 2019 570 Biology
• Linnaeus
  
  20 Apr, 2023 580 Plants
• Genetics
  
  13 Dec, 2001 570 Biology
• Man and Disease
  
  12 Dec, 2002 610 Medicine and health

---

Programme ID: b08q317p

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q317p

Auto-category: 610.92 (Biographies of medical scientists)