(10) Leeuwenhoek described his observations in detail and sent them to the Royal Society, the authority of the European scientific community. However, they did not care about the report sent by this old gatekeeper at all.
(11) But facts would always remain to be facts, and the tiny world described by Leeuwenhoek caused a global sensation. People flocked to the town where Leeuwenhoek lived, hoping to see the tiny world by themselves. Even the noble Queen made a request.
(12) At that time, science was suffocated under the dark rule of the Church in Europe. It was notuntil 200 years later that the mystery of bacteria was truly unveiled since Leeuwenhoek first found microorganism — germs. The man who achieved that was Louis Pasteur.
(13) Pasteur was born in 1822 to a leather-shoemaker father, and Pasteur went to school with his sisters at the age of nine. At that time, little Pasteur was only an ordinary, lackluster child.
(14) Pasteur studied hard and went to college at the age of 21. He majored in chemistry and preferred to observe objects under a microscope. Day after day, he became an excellent chemist and eventually a world-famous bacteriologist.
(15) Lille, a French city, is the center of the beer production. In 1856, a strange thing happened, the originally fragrant beer all turned sour and could not be drunk. This made the beer brewers very worried.
(16) At that time people thought that chemistry was mysterious and could solve every problem, so the beer brewers wrote a letter to Pasteur, trying to figure out what happened.
(17) Pasteur came to Lille with his microscope. After many observations, he found in the beer two kinds of microorganism described by Leeuwenhoek. One had no change and the other gradually increased as the wine became sour.
(18) Pasteur finally confirmed that the malt was the result of bacterial putrefaction. The sour taste was because of the proliferation of a harmful microorganism, which came to be known as lactobacillus.
(19) Pasteur called in the beer brewers and told them why beer had turned sour. But they did not believe him, Pasteur said, “I don't need to taste it, I can tell if it's sour or not just by looking at it with my eyes.”