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Editor's note: This is the final installment of a two-part tribute to Robert Koch, the German bacteriologist who discovered tuberculosis and proved the cause of anthrax. Part 1 appeared on CR4 yesterday.
In 1880, Koch was promoted to the Imperial Health Bureau in Berlin, a position which afforded access to better laboratory equipment and a community of peers. Building upon the methods he developed in Wollstein, Koch devised new ways to cultivate pure cultures of bacteria, first on a potato and then in a special glass dish devised by one of his laboratory assistants, Julius Richard Petri. While in Berlin, Koch also worked with Friedrich Löffler, the German bacteriologist who discovered corynebacterium diphtheriae, the microorganism which causes diphtheria. Koch's own discovery of tubercle bacillus in 1882 led to the publication of his classic work about tuberculosis and the refinement of Koch's postulates, a statement of conditions which must be met in order to prove that a specific pathogen causes a specific disease.
Three years after his arrival in Berlin, Koch traveled to Egypt as head of the German Cholera Commission and discovered vibrio cholerae, a bacterium ingested by drinking contaminated water. Years later, the nations of Europe adopted Koch's guidelines for the control of epidemics and instituted plans for the protection of water supplies. Upon his return to Germany in 1885, Koch headed the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Berlin and was later named Professor of Medicine and Director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases. Trips to South Africa, German East Africa, and India provided opportunities to study plagues such as rinderpest, malaria, blackwater fever, and surra. Although Koch was unable to arrest tuberculosis, he succeeded in halting an outbreak of rinderpest or "cattle plague" in South Africa. Later, at an international medical conference in London, Koch surprised participants when he claimed that the bacilli which cause human and bovine tuberculosis are not identical.
In 1905, Robert Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in recognition of his work. During his long career, he was also awarded the German Order of the Crown, the Grand Cross of the German Order of the Red Eagle, honorary doctorates from European Universities, and medals from Russia and Turkey.
Robert Koch died on May 27, 1910 in Baden-Baden, Germany.
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