General Microbiology

EDWARD JENNER (1749-1823)

Edward Jenner was the pioneer of the dreaded smallpox vaccination and also the father of immunology. Jenner, an English physician in 1798 successfully vaccinated a boy named James Phipps against smallpox (caused by variola virus). Smallpox was a disease that reached an epidemic level in the 17th-18th century, and the disease negatively impacted humanity causing […]

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LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-1895)

Louis Pasteur, a French scientist was the first to report the role of microorganisms in fermentation in 1848. Though a trained chemist, Pasteur was also one of the first scientists to recognize the significance of optical isomers, and he emerged one of the greatest biologists of the 19th century. Louis Pasteur achieved distinction in organic

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ALEXANDER FLEMMING (1881-1955)

Alexander Flemming, a Scottish born physician who spent most of his time studying bacteria discovered the world’s first antibiotic “Penicillin” from the mould Penicillium notatum. Though, mankind has used a number of chemicals including herbs to treat infectious diseases since time immemorial, the astonishing discovery of penicillin (the first therapeutically used antibiotic) marked the beginning

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AVERY OSWALD (1877-1955)

Avery Oswald was a Canadian-born American physician and medical researcher who provided the molecular explanation for Griffith’s transformation of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for his discovery in 1944 that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are

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HANS CHRISTIAN JOACHIM GRAM (1853-1938)

Hans Gram developed a microbiological technique which is still used today in clinical microbiology practice and bacteriology in particular for microbial identification and classification. His technique is generally used in microbiology for differentiating and classifying bacteria into two major types based on their reaction to certain stains or dye. The technique he developed is called

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JOHN NEEDHAM (1713-1781)

John Needham is the English scientist who performed experiments on spontaneous generation or abiogenesis in mutton broth and hay infusions. Needham showed that mutton broth boiled in flask and then sealed could still develop microorganisms, which supported the theory of spontaneous generation. He took hot boiling mutton gravy (meat infusion) in a flask and closed

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ANTHONY VAN LEEUWENHOEK (1632-1723)

Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch scientist and tradesman who did a part time job as a draper and amateur microscopist while investigating the microbial world whit his crude or simple microscopes. Leeuwenhoek is generally known as “the Father of Microbiology”, and he is also considered to be the first microbiologist since he was the

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ROBERT KOCH (1843-1910)

Robert Koch, a German scientist was the first medical microbiologist. Koch was also the first to establish the actual relationship between the causative agent of a disease and the disease condition itself. Koch ushered in the beginning of bacteriology, an important field in microbiology that studies bacteria; and he is thus regarded as the father

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