PASTEURS ANNOUNCEMENT OF MOLECULAR CHIRALITY:A DISCREPANCY 1077 there was no train service between Arbois and Diion at the Taking int s.etc..it does not appear at e the preas adimie in Pa to Chapp 丹hgw时mPoA08 that it had taker ts in que the kely,but,tech h的 Arbois,he arrived in time to see his 's death on the 21st and hi at the e on th d,if F 品是宽0恩PAE女 ed bois to appea before on May ore his pre on is i the abo letter of May 27th from Arbois that I have just returne to my family .. ble,ho Saie Fig.6),and even hows the service as it existed in 1850.and it is not certain Ieny-n r.The near (anonymously).while Pa and is Nevers ould ha 1 n pd on Pas r's scientific work.with ch)o me (he of his of the it too rea dista ance ro tioned by date and discussed.Afew nples:his 1877.on the tation of Feb Arbois toN onnerre (if in s such a 28t nthrax vaccine. etc.It that Pasteur's father indicated in 1845 that it took 3 h to major discovery,molecular chirality.before theAcd Chirality DOI 10.1002/chibefore the death of Pasteur’s mother on May 21st would have reached him well after his presentation at the Aca￾de´mie on the 22nd. It is also possible, however, that the letter was carried from Arbois to Pasteur in Paris by a courier. In 1848 there was no rail link to Arbois (see Fig. 6), and even today, there is no railway service to Arbois. The map in Figure 6 shows the service as it existed in 1850, and it is not certain that every railway line on the map was also functioning in 1848; thus, the map is a best-case scenario of the service that may have been available 2 yr earlier. The nearest train stops to Arbois with service to Paris were in Tonnerre and Nevers (see Fig. 6). Thus, a courier would have had to take a diligence (stagecoach) from Arbois at least to one of these towns and then take a train from there to Paris. In 1848 (the year of the events in question) it took ‘‘une jour￾ne´ e,’’ i.e., at the minimum the daylight hours of a day, to travel by train from Paris to Le Havre,51 a distance roughly equal to the train trajectory from Nevers to Paris. As for the time it would have taken a stagecoach to travel from Arbois to Nevers or Tonnerre (if indeed there was such a service), it is difficult to estimate it, but it is instructive that Pasteur’s father indicated in 1845 that it took 3 h to travel from Arbois to Dijon (a town considerably closer to Arbois than are Tonnerre and Nevers, see Fig. 6).52 Since there was no train service between Arbois and Dijon at the time, Pasteur’s father was presumably referring to travel by stagecoach or to a combination of stagecoach to Chalon and from there by train to Dijon (see Fig. 6). Taking into account the likely limitations of stagecoach and train schedules, connections, delays, etc., it does not appear at all certain that a courier leaving Arbois Sunday morning, at the earliest, would have been able to reach Pasteur with the letter before the presentation at the Acade´mie in Paris the following day. It is also instructive in this regard that in 1844 Pasteur complained53 to Chappuis that it had taken him 3 days to travel from Paris to Arbois. While Pasteur indicated that on that occasion the service was particularly slow, and it took place 4 yr earlier than the events in ques￾tion, the three-day trip nevertheless gives an indication of the time-scale of travel between Paris and Arbois in the mid-1840s. Thus, overall, delivery of the letter to Pasteur in Paris before the presentation appears to have been unlikely, but, technically, without more definitive informa￾tion, it cannot be ruled out with certainty. Two points need to be emphasized here. (1) If it is true that Pasteur’s mother fell ill on Sunday, the 21st of May and died within a few hours, and if he did receive the let￾ter informing him of her illness before the presentation at the Acade´mie on the 22nd and had immediately departed for Arbois, he would not have arrived in time to see his mother alive. (2) Given the short time frame between his mother’s death on the 21st and his presentation at the Aca￾de´mie on the 22nd, if Pasteur did leave for Arbois before his presentation, he could not have returned to Paris in time to appear before the Acade´mie on the 22nd. It is therefore an inescapable conclusion that Pasteur must have left for Arbois after his presentation at the Acade´mie on May 22nd, even if he received the letter before his pre￾sentation. This conclusion is in accord with his statement in the above-cited45 letter of May 27th from Arbois that ‘‘I have just returned to my family ....’’ TREATMENT OF THE EPISODE IN THE LITERATURE ON PASTEUR The Works of Rene´ Vallery-Radot Pasteur’s first biographer was his son-in law, RVR (LPVR’s father). His first biography54 of Pasteur appeared (anonymously) in 1883, while Pasteur was still alive, and is known to have been produced under Pasteur’s control.55,56 The biography focused on Pasteur’s scientific work, with few personal details of his adult life mentioned. Pasteur’s presentation of his discovery of molecular chirality to the Acade´mie is not mentioned in this biography, while many other of Pasteur’s presentations to the Acade´mie are men￾tioned by date and discussed. A few examples: his presen￾tation in 1857 of lactic fermentation57; the presentation of April 30th, 1877, on anthrax58; the presentation of Febru￾ary 28th, 1881, on the anthrax vaccine,59 etc. It is simply incomprehensible that Pasteur’s presentation of his first major discovery, molecular chirality, before the Acade´mie was not even mentioned in RVR’s scientific biography of Pasteur. This was the discovery that catapulted the Fig. 5. Rene´ Vallery-Radot. (Reprinted from ‘‘IMAGES DE LA VIE ET DE LŒUVRE DE PASTEUR,’’ by L. Pasteur Vallery-Radot, Flammarion, 1956). PASTEUR’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF MOLECULAR CHIRALITY: A DISCREPANCY 1077 Chirality DOI 10.1002/chir