Pastor, the experimenter

The exhibition "Pasteur, the experimenter", presented from 12 December 2017 to 19 August 2018 at the Palais de la découverte, looks back at man and the work of the scientist; it seeks to explain the context of his work, his discoveries and their applications, beyond the legend. An exhibition that finds its full meaning at the Palais de la découverte which, since its opening in 1937, has had a room dedicated to Pasteur's work, developed under the direction of Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot, his grandson. On this 80th anniversary of the Palais, Louis Pasteur is once again in the limelight, in a tour that is both chronological and thematic.

 

 

During his lifetime, Louis Pasteur became a myth, especially, but not only, because he defeated rabies, a deadly and spectacular disease. We owe him the pasteurization that bears his name, but also major advances in the fields of chemistry and microbiology. The exhibition Pasteur, the experimenter, presented from 12 December 2017 to 19 August 2018 at the Palais de la découverte, looks back at the man and the work of the scientist; it seeks to explain the context of his work, his discoveries and their applications, beyond the legend.

 

Scene: History of the rabies vaccine and founding of the Institut Pasteur 
After four years of work, in 1885, the nine-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten several times by a rabid dog, came to Pasteur's laboratory accompanied by his mother. The decision to act must be taken quickly, before the disease broke out, before knowing if Joseph was really infected. Pasteur finally decides to inoculate the young boy with his vaccine. He survives. In the months that follow, many inoculations are carried out in Pasteur's laboratory. As soon as the first successes are known, the "fanatics" rush to the rue d'Ulm and requests for the vaccine flood in from all over the world. As early as 1886, Pasteur expressed his desire to create an independent establishment capable of meeting the growing demand for rabies vaccination. The Pasteur Institute was inaugurated on November 14, 1888 thanks to a national and international subscription.

There was a before and after Pasteur in the field of biology in general and more specifically in microbiology and vaccinology - the science of vaccines. The existence of microorganisms was then known but their role in the phenomena of life, such as fermentations, or phenomena of death, such as diseases, was still not understood. Disease was attributed to abnormal cell activity and contagion, its causes and modes were mysterious. Thanks to Louis Pasteur's research and that of his contemporaries, the populating of invisible territories by these microscopic actors takes on its full meaning. Pasteur convincingly highlights that microorganisms are responsible for infectious diseases, and that it is these, despite their size, that cause so much devastation. An idea that was particularly difficult to conceive at the end of the 19th century.

In collaboration with the Institut Pasteur and with the support of Sanofi Pasteur.

 

Accessible from the age of 9, the exhibition brings together films, interactive elements, reconstructions of scenes from the period, animated models and an optical theatre that tell the story of Louis Pasteur and his work. The theatrical reference is spun here, referring to the stagings orchestrated by Pasteur to disseminate his results, his public scientific demonstrations and his communications marked by a deliberately dramatic tension. Large velvet curtains, bleachers, a prologue, seven acts and an epilogue make up the scenography of this journey.