Pasteur
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Pasteur. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LOUIS, a French chemist and physicist; born in Dôle, Jura, in 1822; educated at Jena University and the Ecole Normale, Paris, where in 1847 he took his degree as doctor. The following year he was appointed Professor of Physics in Strassburg, where he devoted much research to the subject of fermentation; in 1857 he received the appointment of dean in the Faculty of Sciences, Lille; in 1863 he became Professor of Geology, Chemistry, and Physics at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris; and in 1867 Professor of Chemistry at the Sorbonne. He became a member of the French Academy in 1882. He has been especially successful in proving the part played by microbes in fermentation and decomposition, in introducing a successful treatment of disease in silkworms and cattle, and has achieved great success in his efforts to check hydrophobia by means of inoculation. To enable him to deal with this disease under the best conditions a Pasteur Institute was opened in Paris, where patients are received from all parts of LOUIS PASTEUR Europe. A similar institution, in New York City, has proved very successful. He died in Paris, Sept. 28, 1895.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Louis, pas-ter' (1822-1895), a French chemist. He was born at Dole. He was educated at Jena and Paris. He became professor of chemistry in the University of Paris. He became interested in the study of hydrophobia and fermentation. He was one of the leading men in the study of disease germs and means of killing bacilli, especially by heat. Pasteur taught the possibility of excluding germs by canning, and was of service to the brewers and wine makers by pointing out the germ nature of fermentation. He taught the method of heating and bottling milk known in scientific circles as "pasteurization." Pasteur showed that inoculation is the introduction of pox germs. He died while investigating the diseases of the silkworm. Pasteur put bacteriology on a firm scientific basis.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts get details wrong that are now settled: Pasteur never studied at Jena (he trained at Besançon and the École Normale in Paris), he died not "in Paris" as Collier's has it but at Villeneuve-l'Étang near Saint-Cloud, and Aiton's claim that he "died while investigating the diseases of the silkworm" misplaces work he had finished by about 1870. The Paris institute Collier's describes as a place where rabies "patients are received from all parts of Europe" is now the hub of a network of some thirty Pasteur Institutes worldwide, and it was there in 1983 that Luc Montagnier's team isolated HIV, work that won the 2008 Nobel Prize. The biggest shift is in reputation rather than fact: after Pasteur's laboratory notebooks were opened to scholars in the 1970s, historians — notably Gerald Geison in 1995 — showed that the celebrated 1881 anthrax trial at Pouilly-le-Fort used a chemically killed vaccine of Toussaint's type rather than Pasteur's own attenuation method, and that he was less candid in public than his legend allowed. He remains, as Aiton's says, the man who put bacteriology on a firm scientific basis; he is now also read as a brilliant and combative self-publicist.
Written for this edition, 2026.