LS in French, signed “L. Pasteur,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 5.25 x 8, April 23, 1873. In part (translated): “The Council of Studies at the Polytechnical School recently drew up a list of candidates for the position of terminal degree examiner. Two candidates were under consideration: Mr. Bouquet, a former student at the Ecole Normale and Mr. Jordan, a former student of the Ecole Polytechnique. The former was supported by the majority of the mathematicians, the latter by the minority. Before the Council, one of my colleagues in the Academy of Sciences, Mr. Fremy, did not hesitate to attack the former Ecole Normale candidate, not because of that principle of eternal justice which requires us to choose the one we believe most worthy, but on the basis of a narrow esprit de corps. He based his arguments on passages from a brochure I published after the war and in which I tried to put my finger on the causes of our scientific decline.
I vigorously protest against Mr. Fremy’s interpretation of my words. The feeling that it is necessary to insure the scientific superiority of our beloved and today so unfortunate country, in the shortest possible time, has been one of the passions of my life. The three articles in the brochure at issue are the fruit of my profound convictions and I consider that I have done one of the most honest, most virile, and most useful deeds of my scientific career by being one of the first to call the attention of those in power to the causes of our inferiority.
I ask you Sir to be pleased to accept the homage of a copy of that brochure and to take the trouble to read it, particularly the two last articles in which I talk of the Ecole Polytechnique. I am sure that you will form an opinion totally opposed to Mr. Fremy’s on the facts set forth in it.” In fine condition.
Pasteur was an intellectual enemy of the chemist Edmond Fremy, who opposed him on the ideas of spontaneous generation and fermentation. Modern science has decidedly ruled in Pasteur’s favor, and in his own time Pasteur attacked Fremy openly and vigorously, verbally and in print. He deplored his lack of scientific method and no doubt considered him one of the reasons for the decline of French science. Much to Pasteur’s dismay, Fremy’s candidate, Camille Jordan, was hired by the Polytechnique where he became a professor. The other candidate, Jean-Claude Bouquet, remained in his role as a professor at the Ecole Normale and was later a member of the faculty at the University of Paris. An exquisite letter in which Pasteur’s enthusiasm and respect for science is plainly evident. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA.
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