Pasteur Institute

Pasteur Institute
Institut Pasteur

Founded	1887; 137 years ago (1887)
Founder	Louis Pasteur
Type	Non-profit[1]
Purpose	Study biology, microorganisms, diseases and vaccines.
Location	Paris, France
Area served	Worldwide
Services	Research, public health, training, innovation
Official languages	French, English
Key people	Stewart Cole (Director)
Employees	2,780
Website	www.pasteur.fr/en

The Pasteur Institute (French: Institut Pasteur, pronounced [ɛ̃stity pastœʁ]) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. The institute was founded on 4 June 1887 and inaugurated on 14 November 1888.

For over a century, the Institut Pasteur has researched infectious diseases. This worldwide biomedical research organization based in Paris was the first to isolate HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in 1983. It has also been responsible for discoveries that have enabled medical science to control diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, influenza, yellow fever, and plague.

Since 1908, ten Institut Pasteur scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology—the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared between two Pasteur scientists.