The Pasteur Memorial Lecture of the Chemical Society

Abstract

A SPECIAL meeting of the Chemical Society was held on Thursday evening, March 25, when Prof. Percy Frankland, F.R.S., delivered the Pasteur Memorial Lecture. Prof. Frankland commenced his discourse by pointing out that the consideration of Pasteur's work was a subject specially befitting the Chemical Society, inasmuch as he owed the training which enabled him-to master so many and such various problems to that rigorous discipline to which in early years he was subjected in the pursuit of chemistry. Pasteur's interest in this science was exhibited at a very early age, and even when he was a lad at the provincial college of Arbois, his master cherished the ambition that he would one day occupy a chair at the famous École normale in Paris. This hope was well justified, for it was there that Pasteur, as assistant to M. Balard, commenced those epoch-making discoveries which have stimulated researches in, and practically founded, that fascinating and important branch of chemical science known as stereo-chemistry. Perhaps the most conclusive and eloquent testimony which we can have to the profound importance of Pasteur's researches in this direction is the tribute paid to them by one of his greatest followers, Emil Fischer, who acknowledged but a short time since that, despite the immense amount of work which has been subsequently carried out in this field, "there is hardly a. new fact of fundamental importance which has been added to his discoveries.”