Thursday, June 10, 2010

His Best Collaborator

"Louis Pasteur and Marie Laurent were married on May 29, 1849. He was twenty-six; she was twenty-two. Marie Pasteur was an extraordinary wife. Emile Roux, who became Pasteur's assistant in 1876 and director of the Pasteur Institute in 1904, described her as follows:

"From the beginning of their married life, Madame Pasteur understood the man she had married. She did everything to protect him from the difficulties of life, taking to herself the worries of the home, that he might retain the full freedom of his mind for his investigations. During the evenings, she wrote under his dictation. She took a genuine interest in crystalline structure or attenuated viruses. She had become aware that ideas become the clearer for being explained to others and that nothing is more conducive to devising new experiments than describing the ones which have just been completed. Madame Pasteur was more than an incomparable companion for her husband, she was his best collaborator.""

-- Philip Cane, Giants of Science

As I read the portion of this article on Marie Pasteur to the boys this morning, I was so inspired by what Roux said about her. She was being exactly that which God calls us as wives to: a helpmeet for our husbands. Marie Pasteur seemed to have taken her calling seriously, diligently and well. And it made a difference - in the life of her husband, in the life of the man who wrote this, and in my life by reading it. It encourages my heart to keep on, keeping on in the work of taking care of husband and home. I hope it inspires you as well. What important work we do for God, ladies!!

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