Robert Koch: German physician, bacteriologist

He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for studying tuberculosis.

Robert Koch
Robert Koch
Born	December 11, 1843 Clausthal, Germany
Died	May 27, 1910 Baden-Baden, Germany
Alma mater	University of Göttingen
Known for	Tuberculosis
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1905)
Scientific career
Fields	Medicine
Institutions	Institute for Infectious Diseases, Berlin, Germany

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

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.

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