Robert Koch

Life
1843-1910 (66 years old)

Country
Germany

Year of great discovery/work
1880s

Koch and his team developed ways of staining bacteria to improve their visibility under the microscope. In so doing, they were able to identify the bacterial causes of tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax. Koch is probably best known for Koch’s postulates: 1. An organism must always be present, in every case of the disease; 2. The organism must be able to be isolated from an infected host and grown in pure culture; 3. Samples of the organism taken from pure culture must cause the same disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible animal in the laboratory; 4. The organism must be isolated from the inoculated animal and must be identified as the same original organism first isolated from the originally diseased host.

Did you know?
Koch was a battlefield surgeon during the Franco-Prussian War.