Louis Pasteur

Études sur la maladie des vers à soie, volume 1

1870

Pasteur's report on pébrine, the disease that was collapsing the French silk industry. He examined silkworms, moths, and eggs under the microscope for small bodies he called corpuscules, argued the disease was both contagious and passed through the egg, and proposed a breeding method: inspect each moth microscopically and keep eggs only from moths free of corpuscules.

Études sur la bière

1876

A book on brewing. Pasteur argues that yeast is a living organism responsible for fermentation, that beer spoils because foreign microscopic organisms arrive with airborne dust, and that beer will keep if the wort is heated, shielded from dust, and seeded with pure yeast. He describes flask experiments in which protected wort stayed sound while exposed wort turned, and lays out a brewing process built on those results.