Abstract
IT is a pleasing task to review a book devoted to the life of a great man, and especially so when that book, like the one before us, does not pretend to be an exhaustive biography, but is intended to tell simple salient facts in a straightforward and scientific manner. This is well accomplished in sixteen chapters; and those who read them will have had amply demonstrated to them a most lovable and simple character, and a series of epoch-making discoveries which the reader can never fail to appreciate, for they were all directed to alleviate suffering and distress. In the first chapter one seems to obtain a clue to the bent of Pasteur's mind, for at the age of twenty-five he had worked out the optical properties of the tartaric acids, and had laid the foundation of our knowledge of the grouping of atoms. In the manner in which he studies the growth of the crystals one sees at this early stage the mind of the biologist, and step by step this becomes more noticeable. In the second chapter, two great events are briefly and sympathetically chronicled by the authors. The first is his marriage, the second emphasises his remarkable observation upon the action of fermentation upon the tartaric acids, showing the delicate selective action of organisms in readily picking out what appear to be chemically identical substances. “His work during this period stands out as one of the most remarkable and artistic monuments in the annals of chemical science.”
Pasteur.
(The Century Science Series.) By Percy Frankland, and Mrs. Percy Frankland. Pp. vi + 224. (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1898.)
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B., R. Pasteur. Nature 58, 290 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058290a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058290a0
