Tag: microbiology
Louis Pasteur invented microbiology and transformed public health
Great scientists become immortalized in various ways.
Some through names for obscure units of measurement (à la Hertz, Faraday and Curie). Others in elements on the periodic table (Mendeleev, Seaborg, Bohr, among many others). A few become household names symbolizing genius — like Newton in centuries past and nowadays, Einstein. But only one has been honored on millions and millions of cartons of milk: the French chemist, biologist and evangelist for experimental science Louis Pasteur.
Pasteur was born 200 years
How Will the Coronavirus Evolve?
In 1988, Richard Lenski, a thirty-one-year-old biologist at UC Irvine, started an experiment. He divided a population of a common bacterium, E. coli, into twelve flasks. Each flask was kept at thirty-seven degrees Celsius, and contained an identical cocktail of water, glucose, and other nutrients. Each day, as the bacteria replicated, Lenski transferred several drops of each cocktail to a new flask, and every so often he stored samples away in a freezer. His goal was to understand the mechanics