Celebrating Louis Pasteur’s bicentenary

Louis Pasteur spent decades exploring the boundary between living and non-living entities. His innovative studies of fermentation processes and infectious diseases were rooted in this contested territory. But in his day, the question of where chemistry ends and biology begins was more than a dispute about academic frontiers.

Several leading 19th-century German scientists argued that life was only a set of very complex chemical processes. These ‘medical materialists’ dismissed the concept of a ‘vital force’ as an outdated myth. Some radical thinkers embraced this viewpoint, while many religious believers and political conservatives condemned it. The reception of Pasteur’s discoveries must be viewed against the background of this culture war.