Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 72.djvu/22

18 Arbois. His father, an old soldier, was anxious that his son should be a professor in a communal college. The young man took a course in philosophy at Besançon, where at eighteen he began to teach. Three years later he had prepared himself for the normal school, but delayed entrance till 1844, in order that he might enter with higher rank. In the normal school he specialized in chemistry, under Balard and De Lafosse of that school, and under Dumas of the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne made him doctor of science in 1847. Leaving the normal school in 1848, he accepted a professorship of physics in the Lycée of Dijon, where he gained fame by his researches into the structure of crystals. In 1854 he was made professor of chemistry at Strasbourg, dean of the

faculty of science of Lille in 1854, director of studies in the normal school in 1857, professor of geology, physics and chemistry in the school of fine arts in 1865, professor of chemistry in the Sorbonne in 1867. These dates indicate the rapidity of bis promotion and the nature of his activity. For several years prior to his appointment to a professorship in the Sorbonne, he had studied infusoria and had reached conclusions directly opposed to those held by Pouchet, the director of the Museum of Natural History, at Rouen. Pasteur was confident that infusoria were from germs, or microbes, and that they fixed themselves in