Beakers & bellows.

• Author: Couch, Robin L.
• Position: Fisher Scientific Co. collection of scientific instruments - Corporate Gallery: The Fisher Collection - Cover Story

The story goes that, in the 1930s, Chester G. Fisher, founder of Fisher Scientific, and his three sons decided to go sightseeing in Paris. While there, they visited Napoleon's tomb, waiting in line among many other sightseers. When they left the tomb, they asked their cab driver to drop them at the tomb of Louis Pasteur, the French chemist and bacteriologist who created a vaccine against rabies and is credited with discovering, among other things, the causes of childbirth fever and how the fermentation process works. To the Fishers' surprise, the cab driver had no idea where to find Pasteur's tomb.

When the group finally located the grave on the grounds of the Pasteur Institute, an old man there unlocked the gate that led to the tomb, explaining that no one had asked to see the burial site in months. The Fishers paid their respects and, before leaving, photographed the gatekeeper at the tomb. When they asked his name, they discovered the old man was Joseph Meister, who as a child had been bitten by a rabid dog and received the world's first vaccination for hydrophobia from Louis Pasteur.

Chester Fisher was so touched that this one man was devoting his life to watching over Pasteur's tomb, and so amazed that the French seemed indifferent--even antagonistic--about the chemist that the scientific community considered its patron saint, that he dedicated a section of his Pittsburgh-based company's museum to Louis Pasteur.

Over the years, Fisher Scientific, a supplier of scientific instruments and high-purity chemicals, has collected more than 900 pieces of top-quality artwork and memorabilia that trace 2,000 years of science, from Chinese alchemy in A.D. 142 to the Atomic Age. Forty masterpieces, including 17th- and 18th-century works by Dutch and Flemish artists, are on permanent display in the company's primary museum. The adjacent Pasteur Memorial is home to many portraits of the scientist, some of his letters and notebooks, and lab equipment he once used.

Curator Harry Schwalb explains that the Fisher Collection is more than artwork; it's a record of the way early laboratories looked. They were in small, dim rooms in the homes of the scientists. The spaces were cluttered with stacks of reference books, strangely shaped beakers, bellows for fireprodding, and stuffed amphibians (the latter "partly as charms to aid transmutation of elements, partly raw materials for concoctions," Schwalb explains). Because the Fisher paintings show in detail...