I really enjoyed Dr. Alber’s discussion las Tuesday! Talking about the historical relevance of Pasteur’s findings (like the Franco-Prussian war) and the reason he moved back to Arbois (because of the loss of said war) was incredibly fascinating to me. Learning more about Louis Pasteur’s life added more “realness” to Louis as a person; I think many times we think of great scientific discoverers as only the scientists who discovered vaccines, for example, and not as real people who had other things going on in their lives. Knowing he had a son in the war, and that he was patriotic, and that he worked to improve French beer so as to “not rely on Germany” just makes him more human in my brain than his portrayal in the movie as a diligent scientist whipping up vaccines.
Another bit of information Dr. Alber brought up was that he was the one who discovered stereoisomers in chemistry. He really had a breadth of discovery in his time and dabbled in a lot of different things. Seeing someone who was making discoveries purely out of curiosity was so cool because he was curious about practically everything. Catalysts, microorganisms, vaccines, stereochemistry, fermentation – practically the entire spectrum of science in just one lifetime. Incredible!
I lol at the thought of him just “whipping up vaccines”. I think you hit on many good points in your post that came across in the talk. His genius is one and another is his diverse set of motivations.