Medicine: 1905

Koch, Robert pronounced kawhk or kohk, (1843-1910), a German physician, played a key role in helping bacteriology develop as a science during the 1800's. He introduced new techniques of staining and culturing (growing) bacteria, and he became the first scientist to show that specific bacteria cause certain diseases. Koch discovered the causes of tuberculosis and other diseases. He received the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1905 for his work on tuberculosis.

Koch was born in Clausthal, near Hanover. He earned a medical degree at Gottingen in 1866. In 1872, Koch moved to Wollstein (now Wolsztyn, near Poznan, Poland). He began to study anthrax, a disease that affects people and livestock. Koch discovered that rodlike bacteria in the blood of diseased animals caused anthrax. He published his findings in 1876. His research on the anthrax bacterium became a model for the study of germs that cause specific diseases.

Koch won fame in 1877, when he published an article describing a method to study bacteria. The method included examining thin films of bacterial cultures on glass slides and photographing them to record their structure. The same year, he published a book that described a series of steps to determine whether a certain germ causes a particular disease. These steps, now known as Koch's postulates, are still used by bacteriologists.

In 1882, Koch discovered the germ that causes tuberculosis. Also in the early 1880's, he developed bacterial cultures that he grew in gelatin, agar, and similar solid substances--a technique that revolutionized bacteriology. Koch discovered the cause of cholera epidemics in Egypt and India in 1883 and 1884. In 1891, Koch founded and became director of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin. In 1897, he demonstrated the cause and cure for rinderpest, a disease killing cattle in what is now South Africa. In 1905, he conducted important research on sleeping sickness in what is now Tanzania.

Contributor: John Scarborough, Ph.D., Professor, History of Pharmacy and Medicine and Classics, University of Wisconsin.