Robert Koch the Father of Microbial Techniques, German Physician, Significant Contributions

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Home >> Microbiology >>Robert Koch 1843-1910 the Father of Microbial Techniques

Your Ad Here	Robert Koch (1843 -1910): The Father of Microbial Techniques Robert Koch, a German Physician, is well known to the world of microbiology for this significant contributions especially in the area of microbial techniques. He introduced analine dyes for staining bacteria; used agar-agar and gelatin to prepare solid culture media; stressed the need for pure culture to study microbes in details; confirmed germ theory of disease, and laid down Koch's postulates to test the pathogenesity of causative agents. He also discovered the casual organisms of anthrax disease of cattle (Bacillus anthracis) and tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).
Robert Koch was particularly concerned with this problem and, at first, he cultured bacteria on solid fruits and vegetables such as slices of boiled potato but many bacteria did not grow on such substrates. Then he perceived that it would be far better if a well-tried liquid medium could be solidified with some clear substance. Koch (1881) tried gelatin as a solidifying agent and succeeded in developing solid culture media, but gelatin, the first solidifying agent used, had serious disadvantage of becoming liquid above 28-30°C which is below the optimum temperature for the growth of human disease producing bacteria.
However, Koch replaced gelatin by agar in 1883-84 on the recommendation of F.E. Hesse, a German housewife, who had gained experience with the characteristics of agar in the process of making jelly. Agar is still frequently used as solidifying agent in microbiological laboratories. The development of solid culture media to grow pure culture was of fundamental importance and may be considered one of the Koch's greatest contributions. Besides developing solid culture media using gelatin and agar, Koch also evolved methods to placed microbes on glass slides and colour them with analine dyes (stains) so that the individual cells could be seen more clearly under the microscope.

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