Robert Koch was born in 1843 in Clausthal, in the Kingdom of Hanover, Germany, and studied medicine at the University of Göttingen. He worked as a country doctor before setting up a modest home laboratory to study infectious disease, using primitive equipment he often improved himself, including new techniques for fixing and photographing bacteria under the microscope.
In 1876 Koch succeeded in identifying the bacillus that causes anthrax, then in 1882 made his most important discovery: the tuberculosis bacillus, one of history's deadliest killers. In 1883 he also identified the bacterium causing cholera. Through this research Koch formulated «Koch's postulates», a rigorous set of scientific criteria for proving that a specific microorganism is the direct cause of a disease, still taught and applied today.
Father of Medical Microbiology
Koch also developed fundamental laboratory methods still in use today, such as growing bacteria on solid agar culture media and microscopic staining techniques to distinguish germ species. He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his tuberculosis research, and his scientific school trained an entire generation of microbiologists who went on to discover the causes of new diseases worldwide.
