Robert Koch

Robert Koch
Robert Koch
Born(1843-12-11)11 December 1843
Clausthal, Germany
Died27 May 1910(1910-05-27) (aged 66)
Baden-Baden, Germany
Alma materUniversity of Göttingen
Known forTuberculosis
AwardsNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1905)
Scientific career
FieldsMedicine
InstitutionsInstitute for Infectious Diseases, Berlin, Germany

Robert Koch (11 December 1843 - 27 May 1910) was a German doctor. He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for studying tuberculosis.

The Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Disease started in 1891, is now called the Robert Koch Institute.

Koch's postulates

Koch developed a system to check whether a microorganism caused a disease. The system was four questions, known as Koch's postulate. Koch's postulates are the following:

  1. The micro-organism must be common in all organisms with the disease, but absent from healthy organisms.
  2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
  3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
  4. The microorganism must be taken from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and shown to be identical to the original one which caused the disease.

The postulates are still useful. Many variations have been developed.

Other websites

References

  1. ↑ "Biography of Robert Koch". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2009-01-05.
  2. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1905". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
  3. ↑ "RKI Homepage". www.rki.de. Retrieved 2009-04-01.[permanent dead link]