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Winner of Physiology or Medical Science
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2007-9-20
R.Koch was born in Kirkjubajarklaustur Germany in 1843. In childhood his dream was to be a sailor, traveling on the vast ocean. But he finally chose medicine because of an incident.
On a morning in Autumn of 1851, in an old wooden church out of Kirkjubajarklaustur, people all over the town were condoling a recently deceased priest. On the way home, the less than 8-year-oldKoch asked his mother, "What disease does the priest die from?" She sighed and said, "cancer, incurable cancer." Was cancer never be cured? Koch questioned this and latter he started the medical career of curing cancer.
19-year-old Koch was accepted to Gottingen University Hospital, and became the student of Haner, the most authoritative pathologist and anatomist in German. Koch was very excellent in academic work, but careless in note-taking. Prof. Haner managed to help him overcome his carelessness and asked him to make a fair copy of a medical paper. Koch asked why to re-transcribe the paper which was not scrabbled written. Prof. Haner told him patiently, "doctors must be strict with themselves. A trivial medical mistake is involving the human life because of a mistaken stroke in the note." Koch was very impressed by his words and from then on became more precise in studies. Afterwards he obtained the Doctorate Degree at 23. He witnessed the miserable soldiers in Franco-Prussian War dying of infections and showed his concern about the source of infections. His young wife supported his work very much and bought him a microscope as his 30-year-old birthday gift, which greatly encouraged him.
In order to find proper environment fit for bacteria reproduction, he tried broth and potatoes as raw material to extract a single and pure bred bacterial colony, but all ended in failure. On the one hand, potatoes were not as nutritious as broth for bacteria to grow; on the other hand, the liquidity of broth lead to a mixture of all the bacterial colonies. But one day he saw agar on table and poured the agar with broth into the culture plate. When the broth became cold and frozen to flat jelly, he inscribed a few lines on the jelly with the inoculator carrying bacteria. A few days later, the bacteria planted absorbed the nutrition from agar jello, after self division and reproduced a pile of pure bred bacterial colonies. This was the first extraction of pure bacteria "solid culture medium" in the world, and was applied to bacteria labs everywhere.
In order to better distinguish each bacteria, Koch attempted to dye them in different colors, but it never worked. Inspired by a chemist, he dressed them in blue with the aniline dye so as to differentiate each bacterium. Moreover, he improved the microscope to take photos of the bacteria for studies. In his whole life, Koch was keeping on working and discovering new fields. At 33 he extracted and proved the anthrax bacillus to be the pathogenic bacteria of anthrax, which firstly testified special microorganism might induce particular disease. After that, Embeth and him worked jointly to extract the bacillus typhosus and he solely extract the tuberculosis germ. He also invented steam sterilization method and vaccination preventing anthrax, which were recognized the milestone of contemporary bacteriology development.
Koch had contributed a lot in his life. When he was investigating in Egypt and India, he found comma bacillus was the pathogen to Asian cholera and proposed prevention measures. He discovered tuberculin to be applied to tuberculosis diagnosis, and proposed tuberculosis preventive principles. He went to West Africa, disclosed the pathogen and pathology of cattle plague and invented cattle plague prevention vaccination. In Bombay India, he found the mouse flea spreading the bubonic plague. And in Africa, he found the tick spreading relapsing fever, etc. So people honored him "rival of cancer". He won the Nobel Prize 1905 for his prominent contributions.
Excessive work made him ill and he died at 67. While in hospital, he still took his beloved microscope to persistently combat bacteria. Now this microscope is collected in Berlin University, which reminds people of the diligent and fearless Koch.
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Organizer:
Beijing Municipal Association for Science & Technology
Undertaker: Beijing Science & Technology
Consulting Center,
Information Center of Beijing Municipal Association for
Science & Technology |
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