Louis Pasteur

December 27th, 1822, Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France, into a poor family. Little did anyone know this boy would grow to make discoveries that would change the world. From the beginning, Louis had a strong interest in the sciences.   After his early education he went on to study at the Sorbonne and later taught chemistry there, still as a student. He went on from there to be a chemistry professor at a new university in Lille, France. From then on he began making discoveries that would cause him to go down in history as one of the greatest biologists/chemists who ever lived.
While still a professor at dgfdftretgfdfgd, Pasteur began to study yeast cells. He showed that during fermentation yeast cells produce alcohol and carbon dioxide from sugar. Fermentation is a type of cellular respiration carried out by yeast cells, which is a way of getting energy for cells even when there isn't any oxygen. Louis defined fermentation as “respiration without air,” but fermentation doesn't always just occur in an anaerobic (without oxygen) condition. Whether or not there is the presence of oxygen, yeasts still prefer to use fermentation to process organic compounds and produce ATP (Hey! we are learning about ATP right now! Coinkydink). Pasteur discovered that fermentation would only happen when living yeast cells were present. This small discovery was just a piece of the puzzle that led to the discovery of pasteurization and other of fascinating findings.

People were beginning to recognize Louis Pasteur as a great chemist. He was asked to try to solve a big problem that the French beverage industry was facing. Fine wines and beers were spoiling. This dilemma was hurting France’s reputation for vintage alcohol, and thus impacting their economy. Pasteur started off by examining wine samples under a microscope, and found that the wine that was properly aged contained small yeast cells. Once the wine spoiled there was a rapid growth or production of bacteria cells by...