20 April 2008

On this day in history: Pasteurization developed, 1862

Louis Pasteur was born on 27th December 1822; he attended the Ecole Normale Supérieur in Paris between 1843 and 1846 when he received a doctorate in chemistry and embarked on a career in science. After working in the field of optics he moved on to the study of biology and medicine for which he was to become famous.

Pasteur theorised and then showed by experiment that the fermentation of liquids was a result of external causes: particles that entered the liquid from the surrounding air. This displaced the popular theory of the time, which was that fermentation was a spontaneous process within the liquid.

On 20th April, 1862, Pasteur and his friend Claude Bernard conducted an experiment to test Pasteur's theory that heat could be used to kill moulds and bacteria in fermenting milk. The experiment was a success and the process of heating beverages to destroy harmful organisms was called pasteurization in honour of its inventor. Pasteur went on to work in the field of immunology before his death in 1895.

For a longer biography of Louis Pasteur, see this page on the Bio-medicine.org site.
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6 comments:

  1. Orlando Rubio20 April 2008 at 20:22

    Ok I learned new thing that Pasteurization is a man's name. Let us not forget the past because we could not reach tomorrow if we don't base anything from the past. Your blog is unique, almost all of the blogs today are focus on irrelevant issues.
    don't worry make money

    ReplyDelete
  2. Green Dragon20 April 2008 at 20:50

    Good Page, nice layout simple and sleek, with good content to boot. Well done!

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  3. Anonymous21 April 2008 at 00:15

    So was the fermenting theory just for milk, or for fruits as well? I know about milk but the way this reads it is curious to know if he did something with other than milk but milk is the one that his name was able to be placed on.

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  4. Borkiman21 April 2008 at 15:19

    Thanks for the kind words edward and green dragon.

    Monique, as far as I know Pasteur didn't focus his research on milk when it came to the process of fermentation. He did conduct his pasteurisation experiment on milk, probably because it is a popular drink and because it goes off fairly quickly. I know that the process can is applied to all manner of produce.

    Cheers
    K

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  5. Anonymous11 May 2010 at 23:31

    there's a lot of miss spells and it needs more info

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  6. Borkiman28 May 2010 at 16:48

    Anon: My spell-checker did not find any errors, and follow the provided link for more information.

    ReplyDelete