Koch, Robert

Koch, Robert (1843-1910), German doctor.

Robert Koch was the director of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin and there he did some of the earliest investigations into the way bacteria or germs cause diseases.

He was the first person to show that a certain germ caused anthrax, a serious disease of animals which can also be caught by people.

He also discovered the germ that causes tuberculosis which was, in his time, a common and deadly disease.

Koch and Louis Pasteur started the science of bacteriology. This is the study of bacteria.

He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1905.

See Christoph Gradmann Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology