À la recherche du temps perdu, translated as In Search of Lost Time and Remembrance of Things Past in English, is a novel in seven parts by Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922). It was published in French from 1913 to 1927. The novel is the story of Proust's own life, told as an allegorical search for truth. It is regarded as one of the greatest works of fiction. In January 1909, Proust experienced the involuntary recall of a childhood memory when he tasted a rusk, which in his novel became a madeleine (a kind of small sponge cake), dipped in tea. In July, he retired from the world to write his novel, finishing the first draft in September 1912. The first volume, Du côté de chez Swann (The Way by Swann's), was refused on several occasions, but was finally published at the author's expense in November 1913. Proust at this time planned only two further volumes. During the war years, he revised the remainder of his novel, enriching and deepening its feeling, texture, and construction, enhancing the realistic and satirical elements, and tripling its length. In so doing, he transformed it into one of the most profound achievements of the human imagination. In June 1919, the second volume, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadows of Young Girls in Flower) appeared simultaneously with a reprint of Swann. In December 1919, À l'ombre received the prestigious Prix Goncourt, which is an annual French literary prize, and Proust suddenly became world-famous. Two more installments appeared in his lifetime. The last three parts of À la recherche were published posthumously in an advanced but not final stage of revision. The first authoritative edition of the entire work was published in 1954.

Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next. If a language is a healthy language, this is happening all the time. Parents pass their language on to their children, who pass it on to their children, and the language lives on. Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages. They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and they are used by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But most of the 6,000 or so of the world's languages aren't in such a healthy state. They are used by very few people. The children aren't learning them from their parents. And as a result the languages are in real danger of dying out. When does a language die? A language dies when the last person who speaks it dies. And this is happening in many parts of the world. There are several dozen languages which have only one speaker left. And several more where the speakers are just a few dozen or fewer. For example, many of the languages spoken by the tribal peoples of Brazil or Indonesia have only a handful of speakers. Languages which have only a few speakers, and which are likely to die out soon, are called endangered languages. Most of the world's endangered languages are spoken in countries on either side of the equator. There are hundreds of languages spoken in Southeast Asia, in such countries as Papua New Guinea. Hundreds more are spoken across India and Africa. Many more are in South America. These are the places where languages are dying out very quickly. But we can find endangered languages anywhere. Most of the Aboriginal languages of Australia are endangered. And so are the Celtic languages of Britain, Ireland, and France. Fewer and fewer people speak Gaelic, the Celtic language of Scotland. And the last native speakers of Manx, the language of the Isle of Man, died out a few decades ago. Perhaps half the languages of the world are going to die out in the next 100 years. That's 3,000 languages disappearing in 1,200 months. If we work out the average, we'll find that there's a language dying out somewhere in the world every two weeks or so. This is much faster than anything that's happened in the past. There's nothing new about a language dying. Languages have always disappeared when the people who spoke them died out. Two thousand years ago there were many languages spoken throughout the Middle East that no longer exist today. Think of all the peoples who invented writing systems, such as the Hittites, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians. Those cultures came and went, over thousands of years, as one defeated another, and the languages disappeared along with the peoples. We know something about these ancient languages because some of them were written down. Unfortunately, many languages of the past were never written down, so they are lost for ever. That's still the case today. About 2,000 of the world's languages have never been written down. If they die before linguists get a chance to record them, they too will be gone for ever. When a culture dies out, it leaves behind evidence of how the people lived. Archaeologists can dig up all sorts of things – pots, skeletons, boats, coins, weapons, bits of houses – but spoken language leaves nothing behind when it disappears. After all, speech is only vibrations in the air. So when a spoken language dies which has never been recorded in some way, it is as if it has never been. There's nothing unusual about a single language dying. But what's going on today is extraordinary when we compare the situation to what has happened in the past. We're seeing languages dying out on a massive scale. It's a bit like what's happening to some species of plants and animals. They're dying out faster than ever before. Why is this?

You're probably familiar with the work of Louis Pasteur, the 19th century French chemist and biologist. He developed a process for killing microbes in milk and wine. And his ideas led to the understanding that tiny organisms caused certain diseases. "He's considered the great helper of mankind," said Dr. Joseph Gal, professor at the University of Colorado. But before all that, Pasteur was an artist. And without his early creative explorations, he may not have made one of his biggest, but least talked about, discoveries in science. As a teenager, Pasteur created portraits. But after his father encouraged him to choose a more serious profession — one that would feed him — he became a scientist. At the age of 24 he would discover chirality. To understand chirality, consider two objects held up before a mirror: A white cue ball from a pool table and your hand. The reflection of the ball is exactly like the original. But with your hand, no matter how much you tried, the mirror image would never fit into the original. Some molecules are like cue balls — an exact image of each other. But others are like hands — the mirror-opposite image of each other. Hands, like the crystals Pasteur would eventually discover, are chiral. And that discovery came down to an accident during winemaking. In 1819, factory workers boiled wine too long and accidentally produced an acid, which had unique properties that interested Pasteur. When studying this acid, Pasteur found that it produced two kinds of crystals — each the mirror opposite of the other. The crystals were handed, or chiral (derived from the Greek word kheir for hand). Chemistry changed forever. So why did this young chemist get it right? Dr. Gal thinks the answer might lie in Pasteur's passion for art. Even as a scientist, Pasteur remained closely connected to it. He taught classes on how chemistry could be used in art. He even carried around a notebook, taking notes about artwork he visited. And then Dr. Gal stumbled upon a letter Pasteur had written to his parents about a lithographic portrait he had made of a friend. Making a lithographic portrait involves carving a drawing into stone, and pressing a piece of paper on top of it. The picture on the paper is a mirror image of the drawing left on the stone. In his letter, Pasteur wrote: "I think I have not produced anything as well drawn. But I greatly fear that on the paper the portrait will not be as good as on the stone; this is what always happens." That's it! "Isn't this the explanation of how he saw the handedness on the crystals — because he was used to that as an artist?" Dr. Gal proposed. "Many objects in our universe have this property of chirality," said Dr. Gal. In the mirror, in wine heated too long, on a piece of stone and in your body: The opposite hands of the universe were discovered by a man who wanted to be an artist, but settled for science.