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Article: Chance and the prepared mind. (Louis Pasteur's discovery of mirror-image isomerism in salts of racemic acid)
- Article from:
- Chemistry and Industry
- Article date:
- May 4, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Society of Chemical Industry. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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'In the fields of observation, chance favours only those minds that have been prepared.' This was the frequently quoted maxim of Louis Pasteur, and at no time was it truer than when he accidentally discovered mirror-image isomerism among the salts of racemic acid (reported to the Parisian Academie des Sciences on 15 May 1848).
This first and most famous resolution of an optically active compound was to immortalise Pasteur's name in the annals of chemistry, more than a decade before he reached notoriety as the founder of microbiology. It is a classic experiment that is simple enough to be duplicated by the average undergraduate student but, at the same time, has ...