Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

French chemist and microbiologist, professor in Strasbourg, Lille and Paris, founder of the Pasteur Institute. In 1848 he observed that the crystals of racemic sodium ammonium tartrate were of two kinds, mirror images of each other; he separated them by hand and found that their solutions rotated polarized light in opposite directions. It was the discovery of molecular chirality.

He also developed resolution with natural chiral bases (1853) and observed that a mould preferentially consumes one of the enantiomers of tartaric acid, the first biological resolution. He then turned to fermentation, pasteurization, the refutation of spontaneous generation and vaccines against anthrax and rabies.

More information: en.wikipedia.org