The Pasteur Institute () 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. Over the years, it has 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. History The Institut Pasteur was founded in 1887 by Louis Pasteur, the French chemist and microbiologist. He was committed both to basic research and its practical applications. From the start, Pasteur brought together scientists with various specialties. The first five departments were directed by two normaliens (graduates of the École Normale Supérieure), Émile Duclaux (general microbiology research) and Charles Chamberland (microbes research applied to hygiene), a biologist, Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (morphological microbe research), and two physicians, Jacques-Joseph Grancher (rabies) and Emile Roux (technical microbe research). One year after the inauguration of the Institut Pasteur, Roux set up the first course of microbiology ever taught in the world, Cours de Microbie Technique (Course of microbe research techniques). Pasteur's successors have sustained this tradition, which is reflected in the Institut Pasteur's unique history of accomplishment: Emile Roux and Alexandre Yersin discovered the mechanism of action of Corynebacterium diphtheriae and how to treat diphtheria with antitoxins Alexandre Yersin discovered in 1894 the pathogen of bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis Paul-Louis Simond discovered in 1898 the role of the flea in the transmission of plague Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin discovered how to culture the tuberculosis bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (so-called BCG or Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) at Institut Pasteur de Lille, and developed in 1921 the first effective anti-tuberculosis vaccine Alphonse Laveran received the 1907 Nobel Prize for his research on the role of protozoans as disease agents (notably, his discovery of the malaria hematozoon) Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in 1908 for contributions to the scientific understanding of the immune system Constantin Levaditi and Karl Landsteiner