Koch, Robert

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 11 December 1843 Clausthal, Hannover, Germany

d. 28 May 1910 Baden-Baden, Germany

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German bacteriologist and innovator of many bacteriological techniques, including the process of bacteria-free water filtration and the introduction of solid cultivation media.

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Koch studied medicine at Gottingen and graduated MD in 1866. He served in the war of 1870, and in 1872 was appointed Medical Officer at Wollstein. It was there that he commenced his bacteriological researches which led to numerous technical advances and the culture of the anthrax bacillus in 1876.

Appointed in 1880 to the Imperial Health Office in Berlin, he perfected his methods and was appointed Professor of Hygiene in the University of Berlin in 1885. From 1886 he was editor of the Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrank-heiten, which was published in Leipzig. In 1891 he became Director of the Institute for Infectious Diseases, founded for him in Berlin. He had already discovered the tubercle bacillus in 1882 and the cholera vibrio in 1883. He travelled extensively in India, Africa and South Africa in connection with research into bubonic plague, malaria, rinderpest and sleeping sickness. His name will always be associated with Koch's postulates, the propositions which need to be satisfied before attributing a disease to a specific infective agent.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology 1905.

Bibliography

1877, "Verfahrungen zur Untersuchung zum Conservieren und Photographieren der Bacterien", Beitr. Biol. Pflanzen.

Further Reading

M.Kirchner, 1924, Robert Koch.

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