Category: Leaders of Our Time

Father of Preventative Medicine

Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822, in Dole in the Jura region of France. His father, Jean-Joseph Pasteur, was a poor tanner and a sergeant major decorated with the Legion of Honour during the Napoleonic Wars. From his father he acquired a strong sense of patriotism, a major element of his character. Louis was an average student in his younger years but was gifted in drawing and painting. His pastels and paintings of friends and family members, made when he was 15, are kept in the museum of the Pasteur Institute inParis. He attended primary school in Arbois, the town where he grew up. He attended secondary school in nearby Besanon. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1840 and his Bachelor of Science degree in 1842 at the Royal College of Besanon.

In 1843 Louis Pasteur was admitted to the Ecole Normale Superieure, an elite teachers’ college inParis. While there he attended lectures by French chemist Dumas. Pasteur decided to become a research chemist and was Dumas’ teaching assistant. Pasteur obtained his Master of Science degree in 1845 and then earned an advanced degree in Physical Sciences. He earned his Doctorate in Sciences in 1847. Pasteur was appointed professor of physics at the Dijon Lycee, a secondary school, in 1848. Shortly after teaching at the Dijon Lycee he accepted a position as professor of chemistry at theUniversityofStrasbourg. While at Strasbourg Pasteur met and courted Marie Laurent, the daughter of the rector of the university. They were married on May 29, 1849. Together they had five children. Only two survived childhood. Of the three who died young, two died of typhoid and one from a brain tumor. These personal tragedies inspired Pasteur to study diseases and find cures.

In 1854, at the age of just 32, Pasteur became Dean of the Faculty of Science at the Universityof Lille. Lille was the center of alcohol manufacture inFrance. In 1856, Pasteur received a visit from a man who worked at a factory that made alcohol from sugar beet. Many of his vats of fermented beer were turning sour and had to be thrown away. He asked Pasteur to find out why. Pasteur began a series of studies on alcoholic fermentation. Using a microscope, Pasteur found thousands of tiny micro-organisms. He was convinced they were responsible for the beer going sour. He believed that they caused the putrefaction- not that they were the result of the putrefaction. He continued to work on this theory by studying other liquids such as milk, wine and vinegar. In 1857, he returned to the Ecole Normale Superieure inParisas Director of Scientific Studies. Between 1857 and 1859, he became convinced that the liquids he had studied were being contaminated with microbes that floated in the air.

The medical establishment ridiculed Pasteur for his germ theory. He was vilified in public. But rather than giving up he was more determined to fight for what he believed in. He devised tests to prove he was right and was eventually able to prove that air contained living organisms; that these microbes can produce putrefaction; that the microbes could be killed by the heating of the liquid they were in; and that these microbes were not uniformly distributed in the air. In April 1864, Pasteur explained his beliefs in front of a gathering of famous scientists at theUniversityofParisand proved his case beyond doubt. With his germ theory established he invented a process in which liquids such as milk were heated to kill most bacteria and molds already present in them. This process was soon afterwards known as pasteurization.

Once Pasteur proved that germs were the cause of fermentation in liquids he believed they could be the cause of contagious diseases in people and animals as well. Because of his study in germs, Pasteur encouraged doctors to sanitize their hands and equipment before surgery. Prior to this, few doctors or their assistants practiced washing procedures. He proposed preventing the entry of micro-organisms into the human body, which led Joseph Lister to develop antiseptic methods in surgery. Pasteur had ushered in the era of preventative medicine.

In the following years Louis Pasteur solved the mysteries of chicken cholera, anthrax in sheep, and silkworm diseases. He contributed to the development of the first vaccines for animal diseases. Pasteur turned next to rabies and developed a vaccine for animals afflicted with the disease. Most people who were victims of rabies died a painful death and the disease was getting more and more common in France. But he faced a problem- what worked on animals might not work on people. In 1885, a young boy, Joseph Meister, had been bitten by a rabid dog and was brought to Pasteur. The boy would have certainly died an agonizing death if nothing was done. Pasteur took a risk and gave the boy his animal-tested vaccine. The boy survived.

All of Louis Pasteur’s achievements point to his brilliance and perseverance. His work was the springboard for branches of science and medicine such as stereochemistry, microbiology, bacteriology, virology, and molecular biology. His work has protected millions of people from disease through vaccination and pasteurization.

“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.”- Louis Pasteur

Jody Victor

 

 

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categories Leaders of Our Time | datetime January 26, 2012 6:32 pm

Jody – Resolving Conflict with Words

William “Bill” Jefferson Blythe III was born on August 19, 1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe, had died in an auto accident several months before his birth. His mother was Virginia Dell Cassidy Blyth, a fun-loving free spirit. She left Bill in Hope with his grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, shortly after he was born to study nursing in New Orleans. The Cassidys owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the U.S. South was racially segregated, Bill’s grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races. Bill’s grandmother was a strong-willed disciplinarian who tried to shape his character and taught him to read at an early age. Both his mother and his grandmother were strong women who competed for his attention. Bill remembered loving both of them during that time of his life, but always felt torn between them as a young mediator for their arguments.

In 1950, Bill’s mother Virginia married Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned a car dealership with his brother in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The family moved to Hot Springs, a busy resort town an hour away from Hope. Bill assumed the surname of his stepfather and when he turned fourteen he formally adopted the surname as a gesture towards him. His stepfather was an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and his half-brother, Roger Clinton, Jr. Many times Bill had to intervene to protect them. Instead of returning his step-father’s physical abuse with more physical fighting, he usually appealed to him verbally for peaceful resolutions.

Bill Clinton attended St. John’s Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School and Hot Springs High School. He was an active student leader, an avid reader and a musician. He especially loved the gospel music of his Baptist faith. While his mother went to the racetracks on Sunday, Bill attended church to hear the music he loved. He was in the chorus at school and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band’s saxophone section. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music. Sometime in his sixteenth year, he decided he wanted to be in public life. Two influential moments contributed to that decision. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to Washington, D.C. and the opportunity to meet his political idol, President John F. Kennedy. He was captured in a historic photograph shaking the President’s hand in the White House Rose Garden. The other was listening to Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, which he later memorized.

In 1964, Bill Clinton graduated from high school and left Arkansas to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. With the aid of scholarships and part-time jobs, he majored in international affairs at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. While in college, he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity. He spent the summer of 1967 (the summer before his senior year) interning for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. Clinton received his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service in 1968.

Upon graduating from Georgetown University, Clinton won a Rhodes scholarship to University College, Oxford (England) where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. While at Oxford he developed an interest in rugby and played for Oxford. Later he played for the Little Rock Rugby Club in Arkansas. Clinton switched programs and left Oxford early to attend Yale Law School. In a Yale library in 1971, he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him. They began dating and were soon inseparable. After just one month, Clinton proposed to Hillary and postponed his plans to be a coordinator for the 1972 McGovern Presidential campaign in order to move to California with her. Clinton did eventually move to Texas with Hillary to take a job leading McGovern’s campaign there in 1972. He had an office in Dallas and worked with future two-term mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, future governor of Texas, Ann Richards, and then unknown television director, Steven Spielberg. Clinton earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale in 1973. Following graduation, Clinton moved back to Arkansas with a job teaching law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974 against a popular incumbent. Even though he lost, it was a close race and Clinton became a rising political star.

Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were married on October 11, 1975. Together they have one daughter, Chelsea, who was born in 1980. In 1976, Arkansas voters elected Clinton state attorney general. In 1978, Clinton ran for governor, winning an easy victory. At the age of thirty-two, he became one of the nation’s youngest governors ever. In 1980, he lost reelection, becoming the youngest former governor in U.S. history. Clinton went to work for a Little Rock law firm but spent most of his time campaigning for reelection. In the 1982 race, Clinton admitted his mistakes. He used his natural charm and effective TV ads to convince the voters to give him another chance. He won in 1982 and again in 1984. In 1986 and 1990, he was supported by the Arkansas voters for two, four-year terms. As governor, Clinton supported centrist issues. He helped Arkansas transform its economy. He strongly advocated for educational reform, appointing Arkansas First Lady Hillary to lead a committee to draft higher standards for schools in Arkansas. Governor Clinton’s reforms positively impacted Arkansas schools, which experienced a decrease in drop-out rates and an increase in college-entrance exam scores. From 1986 to 1987, Clinton served as Chair of the National Governors Association, bringing him out of Arkansas and onto the national stage.

William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton won the U.S. Presidential election in 1992. As President-elect, he vowed to focus on economic issues and issues supported by the middle class. As President, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. He successfully passed welfare reform and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), providing health coverage for millions of children. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of President Clinton’s two terms in office. In foreign affairs, President Clinton succeeded in mediating peace negotiations in Northern Ireland between warring Catholics and Protestants.

Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes such as prevention of AIDS and global warming. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti and after the 2010 earthquake he teamed up with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

“We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.”- William J. Clinton

 

 

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categories Leaders of Our Time | datetime October 26, 2011 8:41 pm

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