Charles Chamberland

Charles- Édouard Chamberland ( born March 12, 1851 in Chilly- le- Vignoble, Jura, † May 2, 1908 in Paris) was a French bacteriologist.

Life and work

Charles Chamberland was a son of the teacher Auguste Chamberland and his wife Apolline Philibert. He first completed a training at the Lycée in Lons -le- Saunier and later at the Collège Rollin of Paris. In 1871 he was admitted to both studying at the École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Chamberland decided to study at the École Normale Supérieure. After completing his training, he worked in 1874 as a teacher at a lycée in Nîmes.

The following year, Chamberland returned to the École Normale Supérieure, where he remained until 1888. Here he was first assistant in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur and found himself caught up in the confrontation with Henry Charlton Bastian on the spontaneous generation of microorganisms. 1879 defended his doctoral thesis Chamberland with the topic research on the evolution and development of microscopic organisms for which he developed in an autoclave. In 1884 he invented the eponymous Chamberland filter, made ​​of unglazed porcelain filter candle whose pores are smaller than bacteria.

On July 7, 1881, he was inducted into the Legion of Honor. From October 4, 1885 until November 11, 1889 Chamberland was a member of the Radical Left ( Gauche radicals ) for the Jura department in the French National Assembly.

After the founding of the Institut Pasteur in 1888, he headed the research department, which dealt with the use of microorganisms to promote human health. One of his main tasks was the preparation for the deployment of vaccines in large scale. In 1904 he became deputy director of the Institute and member of the Académie nationale de Médecine.

Writings (selection )

• Pasteur, Joubert and Chamberland: La théorie of germes et ses applications à la Médecine et à la surgery. In: Bulletin de l' Académie de médecine. 2nd row, Volume 7, 1878, pp. 432-453.
• Recherches sur l' origine et le développement the organismes microscopiques. In: Annales Scientifiques de l' École Normale Supérieure. Episode 2, Volume 7, Supplément, 1879, pp. 3-94 ( PDF, 13.8 MB). - Dissertation
• Le Charbon et la Vaccination Charbonneuse, d' apres les Travaux recents de M. Pasteur. Tignol, Paris 1883 ( online).
• Description of divers modèles du système filtre Chamberland Pasteur; leur application aux eaux, vins, bières .... Tignol, Paris 1885.