The Pasteurisation.

Pasteurisation

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Young Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was born Louis Pasteur was born in Dubes in the Jura department on 27^th December 1822. This department is situated in the East of France and it neighbours on Switzerland. He wasn’t such a good pupil at school, he preferred painting. Later on he was captured by chemistry. He started to study it assiduously. He obtained his scientific education at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. When he was 20 years old he was already famous for his experiments.

Consecutively he worked as a professor of chemistry in Strassbourg and as a professor of chemistry and a dean in Lille. Later on he went back to Ecole Normale as a director of scientific studies. He had stayed at this position until 1867, when he became professor of chemistry at the Sorbonne university in Paris.

In 1856 the emperor Napoleon III. asked Pasteur (on request of the representatives of French wine industry) for help. The souring (fermentation) of wine caused substantial economic losses to the wine industry. And so Pasteur went to a vineyard in Arbois to study the problem. He found out that the fermentation is induced by fermentative micro-organisms, that get into the wine from the air. The same problem arose with beer and milk. In 1865 he found our, that it is suffices to warm up these eatables for short time to certain temperature and the undesirable microbes are destroyed. For beer and wine this temperature was 52,7 C. However milk demands the temperature of 61,6 C and its maintaining for the time of 30 minutes. Eatables which are prepared in such was and with the help of this procedure, have longer durability, because the majority of harmful micro-organisms is destroyed. But not all of them. Some useful bacteria survive, their activity is of course slowed down by storing these eatables in cold environment, for example in refrigerators.

This heat conversation – which was used for the first time in 1870 – has been used until now. The term pasteurisation became common for it. It was derived from the name of its inventor Louis Pasteur, the founder of microbiological science.

Louis Pasteur devoted his life to the solution of practical problems of industry, agriculture and pharmacy. His discoveries saved countless numbers of human lifes and created new technologies, from which the whole world has had the benefit. Among his discoveries belong not only pasteurisation, but above all the ways of prevention of silkworm moths’ disease, lethal anthrax at cattle, chicken cholera and lethal rabies. For his hard work he attained many thanks and expressions of consideration.