History of microbiology

Brief description of History of Microbiology and their inventions towards the science

1. HISTORY OF MICROBIOLOGY

2. A Brief History of Microbiology Microbiology has had a long, rich history, initially centered in the causes of infectious diseases but now including practical applications of the science. Many individuals have made significant contributions to the development of microbiology. A Brief History of Microbiology has had a long, rich history, initially centered in the causes of infectious diseases but now including practical applications of the science. Many individuals have made significant contributions to the development of microbiology.

3. Early history of microbiology . The first observations of microorganisms, but the microscope was available during the mid‐1600s, and an English scientist named  Robert Hooke   made key observations. Robert Hooke (28 July [ O.S.  18 July] 1635 – 3 March 1703) was an English  scientist  and architect, a  polymath , recently called "England's  Leonardo " who, using a microscope, was the first to visualize a microorganism.

4. R OBERT HOOKE DISCOVERY IN MICROBIOLOGY The existence of microscopic organisms was discovered during the period 1665-83 by two Fellows of The Royal Society, Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. In Micrographia (1665), Hooke presented the first published depiction of a microganism , the microfungus Mucor. Later, Leeuwenhoek observed and described microscopic protozoa and bacteria. These important revelations were made possible by the ingenuity of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek in fabricating and using simple microscopes that magnified objects from about 25-fold to 250-fold. After a lapse of more than 150 years, microscopy became the backbone of our understanding of the roles of microbes in the causation of infectious diseases and the recycling of chemical elements in the biosphere.

5. AFTER ROBERT HOOKE (ANTONIE VAN LEEWENHOEK)  In the 1670s and the decades thereafter, a Dutch merchant named  Anton van Leeuwenhoek  made careful observations of microscopic organisms, which he called  animalcules.  Until his death in 1723, van Leeuwenhoek revealed the microscopic world to scientists of the day and is regarded as one of the first to provide accurate descriptions of protozoa, fungi, and bacteria.

6. ANTONIE VAN LEEVENHOEK Van Leeuwenhoek discovered  "protozoa" - the single-celled organisms and he called them "animalcules". He also improved the microscope and laid foundation for  microbiology . He is often cited as the first  microbiologist  to study muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa and blood flow in capillaries. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek , (born October 24, 1632,  Delft , Netherlands—died  August  26, 1723, Delft), Dutch  microscopist  who was the first to observe  bacteria  and  protozoa . His researches on lower animals refuted the doctrine of  spontaneous generation , and his observations helped lay the foundations for the sciences of  bacteriology  and  protozoology .

7. AFTER ANTONIE VAN LEEVENHOEK After van Leeuwenhoek died, the study of microbiology did not develop rapidly because microscopes were rare and the interest in microorganisms was not high. In those years, scientists debated the T heory of spontaneous generation, which stated that microorganisms arise from lifeless matter such as beef broth which stated that microorganisms arise from lifeless matter such as beef broth. This theory was disputed by   Francesco Redi , who showed that fly maggots do not arise from decaying meat (as others believed) if the meat is covered to prevent the entry of flies. 

8. FRANCESCO REDI The son of Gregorio Redi and Cecilia de Ghinci , Francesco Redi was born in  Arezzo  on 18 February 1626. His father was a renowned physician at  Florence .  Francesco Redi attended the  University of Pisa  from where he obtained his doctoral degrees in medicine and philosophy in 1647, at the age of 21.  He was also a member of the  Accademia del Cimento  (Academy of Experiment) from 1657 to 1667. He died in his sleep on 1 March 1697 in Pisa and his remains were returned to Arezzo for interment A collection of his letters is held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland

9. JOHN NEEDHAM An English cleric named  John Needham   advanced spontaneous generation, but  Lazzaro Spallanzani   disputed the theory by showing that boiled broth would not give rise to microscopic forms of life. John Turberville Needham   (10 September 1713 – 30 December 1781) was an  English   biologist  and  Roman Catholic  priest. He was first exposed to  natural philosophy  while in seminary school and later published a paper which, while the subject was mostly about geology, described the mechanics of pollen and won recognition in the  botany  community. He did experiments with gravy and later, tainted wheat, in containers. This was in order to experiment with spontaneous generation.

10. Lazzaro Spallanzani Lazzaro Spallanzani (12 January 1729 – 11 February 1799) was an Italian Catholic biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and animal echolocation. His research on biogenesis paved the way for the downfall of spontaneous generation, a prevailing idea at the time that organisms develop from inanimate matters, though the final death blow to the idea was dealt by French scientist Louis Pasteur a century later.

11. Louis Pasteur and the germ theory  Louis Pasteur  worked in the middle and late 1800s. He performed numerous experiments to discover why wine and dairy products became sour, and he found that bacteria were to blame. Pasteur called attention to the importance of microorganisms in everyday life and stirred scientists to think that if bacteria could make the wine “sick,” then perhaps they could cause human illness. Louis Pasteur was born on Dec. 27, 1822, in Dole, France. Pasteur’s father was a tanner and the family was not wealthy, but they were determined to provide a good education for their son. At 9 years old, he was admitted to the local secondary school where he was known as an average student with a talent for art.

12. GERM CELL THEROY Pasteur had to disprove spontaneous generation to sustain his theory, and he therefore devised a series of  swan‐necked flasks  filled with broth. He left the flasks of broth open to the air, but the flasks had a curve in the neck so that microorganisms would fall into the neck, not the broth. The flasks did not become contaminated (as he predicted they would not), and Pasteur's experiments put to rest the notion of spontaneous generation. His work also encouraged the belief that microorganisms were in the air and could cause disease. Pasteur postulated the  germ theory of disease , which states that microorganisms are the causes of infectious disease.

13.   Robert Koch  Pasteur's attempts to prove the germ theory were unsuccessful. However, the German scientist  Robert Koch  provided the proof by cultivating anthrax bacteria apart from any other type of organism. He then injected pure cultures of the bacilli into mice and showed that the bacilli invariably caused anthrax. The procedures used by Koch came to be known as  Koch's postulates  (Figure  ). They provided a set of principles whereby other microorganisms could be related to other diseases.

14. Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch German11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As one of the main founders of modern bacteriology, he identified the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax and also gave experimental support for the concept of infectious disease, which included experiments on humans and animals. Koch created and improved laboratory technologies and techniques in the field of microbiology, and made key discoveries in public health. His research led to the creation of Koch's postulates, a series of four generalized principles linking specific microorganisms to specific diseases that proved influential on subsequent epidemiological principles such as the Bradford Hill criteria. For his research on tuberculosis, Koch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905 The Robert Koch Institute is named in his honour .

15. Koch's Postulates Four criteria that were established by Robert Koch to identify the causative agent of a particular disease, these include: T he microorganism or other pathogen must be  present in all cases of the disease T he pathogen can be isolated from the diseased host and  grown in pure culture T he pathogen from the pure culture must  cause the disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible laboratory animal T he pathogen must be  reisolated  from the new host and  shown to be the same  as the originally inoculated pathogen

16. EDWARD JENNER Edward Jenner ,  (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English  physician  and  scientist  who pioneered the concept of vaccines including creating the  smallpox vaccine , the world's first  vaccine The terms  vaccine  and  vaccination  are derived from  Variolae vaccinae  (smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the long title of his  Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox , in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox. Jenner is often called "the father of  immunology ", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human".

17. ÉLIE METCHNIKOFF Metchnikoff is rightly famous for his recognition of the biological significance of leukocyte recruitment and phagocytosis of microbes in host defence against infection, inflammation and immunity. As a comparative zoologist he utilised a broad range of model organisms for microscopic studies  in vivo  and  in vitro .  Élie Metchnikoff , Russian in full  Ilya Ilich Mechnikov , (born May 16, 1845, Kharkov ,  Ukraine ,  Russian Empire  died July 16, 1916,  Paris , France), Russian-born zoologist and microbiologist who received (with  Paul Ehrlich ) the 1908  Nobel Prize  for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery in animals of amoeba-like cells that engulf foreign bodies such as bacteria—a phenomenon known as  phagocytosis  and a fundamental part of the immune response.

18. Hans Christian Gram Hans Christian Gram, the inventor of the Gram staining technique, was a pioneering biologist who devised the system of classification which led to as many as 30,000 formally named species of  bacteria  being investigated. He’s the subject of the latest Google doodle, created to honour his birth date of 13 September 1853. Gram, working with German pathologist and microbiologist Carl Friedlander, devised the technique in Berlin in the early 1880s. It is still known as one of the most important staining techniques used in microbiology to identify bacteria under a microscope.

19. ALEXANDER FLEMING Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician-scientist who was recognised for discovering penicillin. The simple discovery and use of the antibiotic agent has saved millions of lives, and earned Fleming – together with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who devised methods for the large-scale isolation and production of penicillin – the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine. Penicillin  V potassium is  used to treat  certain infections caused by bacteria such as pneumonia and other respiratory tract infections, scarlet fever, and ear, skin, gum, mouth, and throat infections