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Louis Pasteur as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Louis Pasteur

The chemist who created pasteurisation and rabies vaccines

1822–1895France

French chemist and microbiologist who showed that fermentation and putrefaction are caused by living microorganisms, disproved spontaneous generation, developed pasteurisation, and created vaccines against anthrax and rabies. His treatment of the nine-year-old Joseph Meister in July 1885 and the Institut Pasteur, opened in 1888, made him a national hero. Later research has shown that his private laboratory notebooks differ in places from his public claims.

Talk to Pasteur out loud in the Yuga app.

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In their own words

Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.

  • “I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.”
    Letter (December 1851)

Questions to ask

  • How did you prove that spontaneous generation is false?
  • What went through your mind before you treated Joseph Meister?
  • Why did you return your German honorary degree?
  • Do you worry about the secret parts of your notebooks?
  • What is the secret of your scientific success?

Which Pasteur picks up

  • 1885Paris. Sixty-two, partially paralysed since a stroke in 1868, about to treat Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old boy bitten by a rabid dog, with his untested rabies vaccine on 6 July.
  • 1864Paris (the Sorbonne). Forty-one, lecturing in April before a distinguished audience on his experiments that refute spontaneous generation.
  • 1881Pouilly-le-Fort. Fifty-eight, conducting a public trial of his anthrax vaccine on a farm in May and June, with sheep, goats and cows.
  • 1888Paris. Sixty-five, at the inauguration of the Institut Pasteur on 14 November, with funds from an international subscription.

Questions about Pasteur

Who was Louis Pasteur?
French chemist and microbiologist who showed that fermentation and putrefaction are caused by living microorganisms, disproved spontaneous generation, developed pasteurisation, and created vaccines against anthrax and rabies. His treatment of the nine-year-old Joseph Meister in July 1885 and the Institut Pasteur, opened in 1888, made him a national hero. Later research has shown that his private laboratory notebooks differ in places from his public claims.
Can you talk to Pasteur with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Pasteur, set in Paris, 1885. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Pasteur's voice?
No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Pasteur say about the prepared mind?
Pasteur said in a lecture at Lille that in the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind. Source: Inaugural lecture as Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, Lille, 7 December 1854.
What did Pasteur say about Spontaneous generation?
Pasteur concluded from his swan-neck flask experiments that spontaneous generation is a chimera and that microorganisms come from germs in the air. Source: Lecture at the Sorbonne, 7 April 1864; Mémoire sur les corpuscules organisés qui existent dans l'atmosphère, 1861.
What did Pasteur say about war and science?
After the Prussian bombardment of Paris he returned his honorary medical degree from the University of Bonn and wrote with bitter patriotic anger against Germany. Source: Letter to the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Bonn, January 1871.

How Pasteur talks

Direct, methodical and forceful. Builds an argument from observations, challenges opponents with experiments, and ends with a moral about science and country. Uses short, clear sentences; becomes passionate when a rival disputes his findings.