Heroes and Cultural Identity Project

SCE Heroes - Robert Koch

ROBERT KOCH

Robert Koch was born in 1843. Koch came from a poor mining family and it took him a lot of determination to get a university place where he first studied mathematics and natural science and then studied medicine. He was considered to be one of the founders of the field of bacteriology. He pioneered principles and techniques in studying bacteria and discovered the specific agents that cause tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax. For this he is also regarded as a founder of public health, aiding legislation and changing prevailing attitudes about hygiene to prevent the spread of various infectious diseases.

Robert Koch is my hero because he was the first to discover the tuberculosis bacterium. On March 24, 1882 when he was just a young physician, he was the first person to isolate the anthrax bacillus and he was the first person to show that a specific organism was the cause of a disease. In 1882 he discovered the Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the cause of the disease. He went on to lead an expedition in 1883 to India and Egypt and discovered the cause of Cholera- Vibrio cholerae. Koch became the first to grow bacteria in colonies in 1890.

For his work on tuberculosis, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1905.

Loola Juma is a science student following a one year university access course in biological sciences