Robert Koch was born on December 11, 1843 in the Upper

Harz Mountains. Robert Koch was the son of a mining engineer; at

the age of five he astonished his parents by telling them that he

taught himself how to read. Robert attended a local high school

and that’s where he found his love for biology and like his father,

the urge to travel. In 1862 Koch attended the University of

Gottingen to study medicine. After getting his M.D degree in

1866 he left for six months to Berlin, there he learned about

chemical study. Then in 1867, he settled as an Assistant at the

General Hospital in Hamburg. In 1872 to 1880 he was District

Medical Officer’s Examination. It was there that he carried out

the epoch-making researches that placed him at one step in front

rank of scientific workers. In 1880 he was also appointed a

member of the Reichs-Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Bureau)

in Berlin, he was provided with, first a narrow, inadequate room,

and later with a better laboratory, in which he could work with all

his assistants. In 1885 he was appointed Professor of Hygiene in

the University of Berlin and Director of the newly established

Institute of Hygiene in the University there. Five years later

Koch was appointed Surgeon General Class 1 and Freeman of the

City of Berlin. In 1891 he became an Honorary Professor of the

Medical Faculty of Berlin and Director of the new Institute for

Infectious Diseases. Koch was awarded the German Orders of

the Crown, the Grand Cross of the German Order of the Red

Eagle, and Orders from Russia and Turkey. In 1905 he was

awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In 1866 Robert married

Emmy Frats; who can birth to their daughter, Gertrud, born in

1865. In 1893 Koch married Hedwig Freiberg. Dr. Robert Koch

died on May 27, 1910, in Baden-Baden. Anthrax was, at the time,

prevalent among the farm animals in the Wollstein district and

Koch, although he had no scientific equipment and was cut off

entirely from libraries and contact with other scientific workers,

embarked on the study of this disease. His laboratory was the 4-

roomed flat that was his home, and his equipment; apart from the
microscope his wife gave him, he provided for himself. Koch set

himself to prove scientifically that this bacillus is the cause of

the disease. He inoculated mice with anthrax bacilli taken from

the spleens of farm animals that had died of anthrax, and found

that the bacilli killed all these mice, whereas mice inoculated at

the same time with blood from the spleens of healthy animals did

not suffer from the disease. This confirmed the work of others

who had shown that the disease could be transmitted by means of

blood of animals suffering from anthrax. In 1876, Koch’s work

was published in the botanical journal of which he was the editor,

Koch immediately became famous. For the next four years he

studied to improve his methods of fixing, staining, and

photographing bacteria and did further important work on the

study of diseases caused by bacterial infections of wounds. Koch

went and invented new methods of cultivating pure cultures of

bacteria on solid media such as a potato. In 1883, he was sent to

Egypt as Leader of the German Cholera Commission, to

investigate an outbreak of cholera in that country. There he

discovered the vibrio that causes cholera and brought back pure

cultures of it to Germany. In December 1904, Koch was sent to

East Africa to study the East Coast Fever and he made important

observations, on the disease and on pathogenic species.

Thereafter 1906, Koch continued his experimental work on

bacteriology and serology.

Koch made and enormous improvement on human knowledge

of many animal killing diseases, he helped in the improvement of

many medicines to help cure the diseases. Robert Koch has won

many awards in his lifetime and even after his death. Koch was a

well-known biologist, mainly in Germany. A British novelist once

said, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the

seeds you plant”, this quote reminds me of Koch. Sometimes he

would learn nothing about the topic he started to study but the

next day he finds all his answers. Robert Koch never gave up even

if his facts didn’t add up just right, but instead he kept trying.