Pierre François Olive Rayer

Pierre François Olive Rayer (8 March 1793 – 10 September 1867) was a French physician who was a native of Saint Sylvain.

He studied medicine at Caen, and afterwards in Paris at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and at the Hôtel-Dieu.

[1] In 1837 Rayer discovered that the fatal equine disease known as glanders was contagious to other species, including humans.

In 1850 Rayer published a paper that provided the first description of the anthrax bacillus (Inoculation du sang de rate, 1850).

He maintained friendships with several influential people in France, that included naturalist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, novelist George Sand and philosopher Émile Littré.