PASTEUR, LOUIS. - DISCOVERY OF "MOLECULAR ASSYMETRY"

Recherches sur les relations qui peuvent exister entre la forme cristalline, la composition chimique et le sens de la polarisation rotatoire. (+) Note sur la Cristallisation du soufre. (Memoir on the relation that can exist between crystalline form and chemical composition, and on the cause of rotatory polarization.) (+) Nouvelles Recherches sur les relations qui peuvent exister entre la forme cristalline, la composition chimique et le phénomené de la polarisation rotatoire.

Paris, Victor Masson, 1848 a. 1851. 8vo. 2 contemp. hcalf, raised bands, gilt spine. Light wear along edges. Small stamps on verso of titlepages and on verso of 1 plate. In "Annales de Chimie et de Physique", 3me Series - Tome XXIV and XXXI. (6),512 pp. and 2 plates + 512 pp. a. 4 plates.(2 entire volumes offered). Pasteur's papers: pp. 442-459 a. pp. 459-460, 1 double-page folded engraved plate + pp. 67-102 a. 1 plate. Some scattered brownspots to first part of the first volume, not affecting P's papers.

First full exposition of Pasteur's momentous and revolutionary discovery of "molecular assymetry" and founding the science of Polarimetry.
The discovery was first announced by Pasteur in may 1848 by the printing of the preliminary report of only 4 short pages, in order to establish priority. The announcement - 4 pages - was published in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris, Seance of May 15, 1848, 26 (21), 535-538 (Published on May 1848).

"In 1848....Pasteur studied the crystals of tartrates (one of the substances that exhibited the now-clockwise, now-counterclockwise effect) under the microscope and found that the crystals were mirror images of the others. The two crystals resembled each other as a right-hand glove resembles a left-hand glove....This was a revolutionary discovery and it took some courage to announce it. A few years before, the well-known chemist Mitscherlich had studies the same tartrate crystals and declared them all to be identical. Pasteur was only a twenty-sic-year-old unknown. neverthelless he announced his findings and went before Biot to repeat the separation ofthe crystals before the eyes of the aged authority in the field. Biot was convinced and Pasteur received the Rumford medal of the Royal Society for his work....Pasteur had thus founded the science of polarimetry in which the measurements of the manner in which the plane of polarized light was twisted could be used to help to determine the structure of organic substance, to follow various chemical reactions, and so on."(Asimov).

Leicester & Klickstein "A Source Book of Chemistry", p. 374-379).

Order-nr.: 49336