Louis Pasteur, renowned for his lab-based achievements, ventured to a glacier in 1860 to explore the presence of airborne germs. Accompanied by a guide and laden with glass containers, he hiked through challenging terrains and harsh weather to reach Mer de Glace. Despite the obstacles and complexity of the fieldwork compared to his Paris lab, Pasteur's determination marked this journey as a significant part of his quest to understand microbial life, which greatly influenced his later work in vaccines and germ theory.
Pasteur was on a hunt, he later wrote, for the floating germs of the air.
He struggled to make out the path in the glare of sunlight bouncing off the ice.
Everything gets complicated away from the laboratory, he once complained to a friend.
The wind blew briskly over the glacier, and the vale echoed with the sound of frozen boulders crashing down the slopes.
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