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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Koch Heinrich Herman Robert. Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
German physician and bacteriologist Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was born on December 11, 1843 in Clausthal-Zellerfeld. His parents were Hermann Koch, who worked in the mine administration, and Mathilde Julia Henriette Koch (Bivend). There were 13 children in the family, Robert was the third oldest child. Developed beyond his years, Robert early became interested in nature, collected a collection of mosses, lichens, insects and minerals. His grandfather, mother's father, and uncle were amateur naturalists and encouraged the boy's interest in the natural sciences. When Robert entered the local elementary school in 1848, he already knew how to read and write. He easily studied and in 1851 entered the Clausthal Gymnasium. Four years later, he was already the first student in the class, and in 1862 he graduated from the gymnasium. Immediately after graduating from high school, Robert entered the University of Göttingen, where he studied natural sciences, physics and botany for two semesters, and then began to study medicine. Many of his university lecturers, including the anatomist Jacob Henle, the physiologist Georg Meisener, and the clinician Carl Gasse, played a crucial role in shaping Koch's interest in scientific research. These scientists took part in discussions about microbes and the nature of various diseases, and the young Koch became interested in this problem. In 1866, Robert received his medical degree. In 1867 Koch married Emma Adelphine Josephine Fratz. They had a daughter. Robert wanted to become a military doctor or travel around the world as a ship's doctor, but he did not have such an opportunity. Koch eventually settled in the German city of Rackwitz, where he began his medical practice as an assistant in a mental hospital, and soon became a well-known and respected physician. However, Koch's work was interrupted when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870. Despite severe myopia, Robert voluntarily became a field hospital doctor and here he gained great experience in the treatment of infectious diseases, in particular, cholera and typhoid fever. At the same time, he studied algae and large microbes under a microscope, improving his skills in microphotography. In 1871, Koch was demobilized and the following year was appointed county health officer in Wolstein (now Wolsztyn in Poland). His wife gave him a microscope for his twenty-eighth birthday, and since then Robert spent whole days at the microscope. He lost all interest in private practice and began to conduct research and experiments, having started a real horde of mice for this purpose. Koch discovered that anthrax, an epidemic disease that spreads among cattle and sheep, affects the lungs, causes skin carbuncles and changes in the lymph nodes, is widespread in the vicinity of Wollstein. Koch knew about Louis Pasteur's experiments with animals with anthrax, and he also decided to observe anthrax bacteria. With the help of a microscope, he traced the entire life cycle of bacteria, saw how millions arise from one stick. Through a series of careful, methodical experiments, Koch identified the bacterium that was the sole cause of anthrax. He also proved that the epidemiological features of anthrax, i.e., the relationship between various factors that determine the frequency and geographical distribution of an infectious disease, are due to the development cycle of this bacterium. Koch's research proved for the first time the bacterial origin of the disease. His papers on anthrax were published in 1876 and 1877 with the assistance of the botanist Ferdinand Kohn and the pathologist Julius Conheim at the University of Breslau. Koch also published a description of his laboratory methods, including staining of a bacterial culture and microphotography of its structure. The results of Koch's research were presented to the scientists of the Konheim laboratory. Koch's discoveries immediately made him widely known, and in 1880, thanks in large part to the efforts of Konheim, he became a government adviser at the Reich Health Office in Berlin. In 1881, Koch published Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms, in which he described a method for growing microbes in solid media. This method was important for the isolation and study of pure bacterial cultures. At this time, a heated discussion developed between Koch and Pasteur, whose leadership in microbiology was shaken by Koch's work. After Koch published sharply critical reviews of Pasteur's research on anthrax, a hard-hitting discussion broke out between the two eminent scientists, which lasted for several years, both in the pages of journals and in public speeches. At that time, every seventh person died of tuberculosis in Germany, and Koch decided to try his luck and find the causative agent of tuberculosis. The doctors were powerless. Tuberculosis was generally considered a hereditary disease, and therefore no attempts were made to combat it. The patients were prescribed fresh air and good food. That's all treatment. The scientist began a persistent search. He examined tissue sections taken from patients who died of tuberculosis. I painted these sections with various dyes and examined them under a microscope for hours. And he managed to detect bacteria in the form of rods, which, when sown on a nutrient medium (animal blood serum), gave rapid growth. And when guinea pigs were infected with these bacteria, they caused tuberculosis in them. It was a sensation. Koch achieved his greatest triumph on March 24, 1882, when he announced that he had succeeded in isolating the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. In Koch's publications on the problems of tuberculosis, principles were first identified, which later became known as Koch's postulates. These principles of "obtaining conclusive evidence ... that a particular microorganism does indeed directly cause certain diseases" still remain the theoretical foundations of medical microbiology. Koch's study of tuberculosis was interrupted when, on the instructions of the German government, as part of a scientific expedition, he left for Egypt and India in order to try to determine the cause of cholera. While working in India, Koch announced that he had isolated the microbe that caused the disease. Koch's discoveries made him one of those people who determine the direction of health development, and, in particular, responsible for coordinating research and practical measures in the fight against infectious diseases such as typhoid fever, malaria, rinderpest, sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) and the plague of man. “The idea that microorganisms must be the cause of infectious diseases has long been expressed by single outstanding minds, but the first discoveries in this area were extremely skeptical,” Koch wrote. diseases. The validity of this proposition was soon fully proved for many infectious diseases ... It was here that it was possible to find out that bacteria are far from random companions and that they occur correctly and exclusively in the corresponding disease. Already on the basis of this, we have the right to speak of an existing causal relationship between disease and parasite as a certain fact, and we can therefore attribute a parasitic origin to a number of diseases, such as typhoid fever, diphtheria, leprosy, and Asiatic cholera. ... The parasitic nature of this disease was rebelled with extraordinary tenacity. Every effort was made to deprive the cholera bacteria of their specific character, but they triumphantly emerged from these attacks, and it can now be considered generally accepted and justified that they are the cause of cholera. In the last comparatively short time, bacteriology has collected a mass of material on the biology of bacteria, and much of this is of significance to medicine. Thus, let us take a state of special resistance, which other bacteria, for example, anthrax and tetanus, exhibit in the form of spores, distinguished by an unparalleled endurance in comparison with other living beings in relation to high temperature and chemical reagents. Let us recall numerous studies on the effects of cold, heat, drying, chemicals, light, and so on on non-spore pathogenic bacteria; all of which have yielded results that are important for prevention. ... If only hopes are justified and if we manage to master the microscopic but powerful enemy in at least one bacterial infectious disease, then I have no doubt that we will soon achieve the same for other diseases. In 1885 Koch became a professor at the University of Berlin and director of the newly established Hygiene Institute. At the same time, he continued to research tuberculosis, focusing on finding ways to treat this disease. In 1890, he announced that such a method had been found. Koch isolated the so-called tuberculin (a sterile liquid containing substances produced by the tuberculosis bacillus during growth), which caused an allergic reaction in tuberculosis patients. However, in fact, tuberculin was not used to treat tuberculosis, since it did not have a special therapeutic effect, and its administration was accompanied by toxic reactions, which caused its sharpest criticism. Protests against the use of tuberculin subsided only when it was discovered that the tuberculin test could be used in the diagnosis of tuberculosis. This discovery, which played a major role in the fight against tuberculosis in cows, was the main reason for Koch's Nobel Prize. In 1905, Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "research and discoveries concerning the treatment of tuberculosis". In his Nobel lecture, Koch said that if we take a look at the path "which has been traveled in recent years in the fight against such a widespread disease as tuberculosis, we cannot fail to state that the first important steps have been taken here." In 1893, Koch divorced his first wife and married the young actress Hedwig Freiburg. People who did not know Koch often considered him suspicious and unsociable, but friends and colleagues knew him as a kind and sympathetic person. Koch was an admirer of Goethe and an avid chess player. In 1906, the scientist was awarded the Prussian Order of Honor, awarded by the German government. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Heidelberg and Bologna. Koch was a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the British Medical Association and many other scientific societies. Koch died in Baden-Baden of a heart attack on May 27, 1910. Author: Samin D.K.
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