A biography of the nineteenth-century French scientist whose insatiable thirst for discovery not only saved the French silk and wine industries from ruinand in the latter case, gave us pasteurizationbut who also developed the first successful vaccine against rabies, a scourge of nineteenth-century life. But even more, Pasteur's study of microorganisms gave rise to the field of microbiology and provided a framework on which future scientists were able to build, resulting in "wonder drugs" like the polio vaccine. -- Publisher details.