1080 GAL Thad the hon or to p sion of Marc sults of a of the the Comptes rendus for thes ion of March THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS aric acid. Overall.then.we are left with a striking paucity of facts that the later.on May 2nd.1 is contradicted by the evidence. The events in the literature conclusions ie in the cor he events of May rs prompts the ing ques ions s the true and hid the?That 9f thev therl f RVR m his moth LPVR. d dificult to image of the national hero.regardless of the ent his first maior er should be nearly com red by his date of Pasteur' THE HAGIOGRAPHY As i t he his in the e fields was and of o efore the to dela man health and the of med r the pres tatior eral factors, e.g the exact contents of the letter pre nents As we have s .it is no received before sk ruled out.As seen,how given the lim idu.o 1 ities and imperfectio ns y RVR is als tortion of Pa uch as it lifeti in his ow pat the de Pa More 2a金 the ques of p in Past fath e rfo raphic portray of Pas The RyR on her (Mare's)35th wedding anniversar Chirality DOI 10.1002/chir 1858, Pasteur wrote96 to the members of the Commission on the Experimental Physiology Prize of the Acade´mie: ‘‘I had the honor to present to the Acade´mie during its ses￾sion of March 29th, 1858, some results of a study of the fermentation of tartaric acid and its isomers.’’ The issue of the Comptes rendus for the session of March 29th, 1858, in fact contains Pasteur’s memoir on the fermentation of tar￾taric acid.97 In summary, then, the claim by Kauffman and Myers that Pasteur presented his memoir on May 15th, 1848, and that the memoir was then published a week later, on May 22nd, 1848, is contradicted by the evidence. The Events in the Literature: Conclusions As we have seen above, overall, the literature is of little help in our attempt to determine the details and implica￾tions of the relevant events of May 1848. Little information is available on the circumstances of the death of Pasteur’s mother, and most publications that give a date for Pas￾teur’s presentation cite the wrong date. Moreover, the con- flict in the dates is not discussed in the literature. Of con￾siderable significance is the unmistakably terse treatment of the events of the episode in the works of RVR and LPVR. It is indeed difficult to comprehend that Pasteur’s prestigious appearance, at age 25, before the Acade´mie to present his first major discovery should be nearly com￾pletely ignored by his biographer relatives in their works, which otherwise can only be described as hagiographic portrayals of the public scientist and the private man. THE HAGIOGRAPHY Pasteur worked on chirality for ca. 10 yr,98 and by the late 1850s had moved on to microbiology, followed later by his celebrated work on infectious diseases. As is well￾known, his work in these fields was revolutionary and of great benefit to human health and the practice of medi￾cine, veterinary medicine, agriculture, etc. His discoveries reveal a scientist with superior scientific intuition, an exceptional observer, and an outstanding experimentalist. However, these qualities and achievements of Pasteur do not suffice in the reconstruction of the totality of the individual. Pasteur was, to be sure, one of the most accom￾plished scientists the world has known, but he was also a complex individual with both admirable qualities and human failings.99–102 Moreover, it is now recognized that a great deal of the published writings on Pasteur’s life and work engaged in hagiography and often presented a less￾than-accurate image of the scientist and the man, an image closer to a demigod than to a human being with complex￾ities and imperfections.99,102–105 The hagiographic distortion of Pasteur began in his own lifetime, with his first biography, by RVR,54 and continued soon after his death with RVR’s La Vie de Pasteur. More￾over, La Vie de Pasteur considerably influenced103 a great deal of the subsequent works on Pasteur. In this regard, a reading of LPVR’s biography106 of Pasteur clearly shows that LPVR relied heavily on his father’s La Vie de Pasteur, and continued the hagiographic portrayal of Pasteur. The hagiographic image of Pasteur has persisted in the litera￾ture for much of the 20th century, and its deconstruction began only relatively recently, but a more accurate depic￾tion of Pasteur and his place in 19th century science, cul￾ture, society, and politics remains to be published.102 THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS Overall, then, we are left with a striking paucity of facts concerning this important episode in Pasteur’s life. The available information is limited to a puzzling, terse, and incomplete recounting of the events in the biographies by RVR and LPVR, the absence of the presentation at the Aca￾de´mie in the Correspondance, and a bizarre incorrect date in the Œuvres. In light of the pervasive hagiographic approach to Pasteur by his biographer relatives, this state of affairs prompts the following questions: was the true date of the presentation deliberately altered in the Œuvres and did the two family biographers manipulate and hide the facts surrounding the events in their works on Pas￾teur? That is, was Pasteur’s famous presentation in Paris one day after his mother’s death in Arbois viewed by LPVR and RVR as potentially intolerably damaging to their faultless image of the national hero, regardless of the pre￾cise reasons for his absence from Arbois at the time of her death? According to this hypothesis, it is also logical to assume that in addition to altering the date of Pasteur’s presentation, minimizing the discussion of the events would have seemed necessary to RVR and LPVR to avoid potentially causing the emergence of some inconvenient details. This, then, would explain the laconic or silent treat￾ment of Pasteur’s first great discovery and his mother’s death by the two biographers. Another question of interest is whether Pasteur—if he received the letter alerting him to his mother’s illness before the presentation at the Acade´mie—decided to delay his departure to Arbois until after the presentation. Such a decision would presumably have been influenced by sev￾eral factors, e.g., the exact contents of the letter, the pre￾cise time of its receipt, and by train and stagecoach sched￾ules, etc. As we have seen, it is not very likely that Pasteur received notification of his mother’s illness before his appearance at the Acade´mie, but technically it cannot be ruled out. As we have also seen, however, given the lim￾ited amount of time available and the travel conditions in the 1840s, in any case, Pasteur could not have arrived in time to see his mother alive. Furthermore, it is also clear that he left for Arbois only after his presentation at the Acade´mie. The silence about Pasteur’s presentation of May, 1848, in the 1883 biography by RVR is also relevant in this con￾text, inasmuch as it is clear that the biography was written under close supervision by Pasteur (see earlier), raising the question of Pasteur’s role in the affair. In considering these matters, we must also bear in mind Pasteur’s renowned unrelenting work habits,107,108 ambi￾tion,109 and pursuit of glory,110 which are known to have interfered, at times drastically, with his family life. A por￾tion of a letter Pasteur’s wife Marie (ne´ e Laurent, 1826– 1910, see Fig. 7) wrote to her daughter Marie-Louise and son-in-law RVR on her (Marie’s) 35th wedding anniversary 1080 GAL Chirality DOI 10.1002/chir