History of Microbiology Flashcards
Robert Hooke
- Built the first compound microscope
- Used it to observe mold, fleas, and cork
- Published Micrographia
- Coined the term, “cell”
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
- Built single-lens magnifiers
- First to observe single-celled microbes
- He called them “small animals”
Spontaneous Generation
The historical theory that living organisms could come from non-living matter
Francesco Redi
Did an experiment to investigate spontaneous generation where he covered a container or raw meat with paper, gauze, or nothing
Lazzaro Spallanzani
Did an experiment to investigate spontaneous generation where he boiled a broth, then either covered or uncovered it and looked at whether it was cloudy
Louis Pasteur
Did an experiment where he heated broth in either a flask with a curved neck or a straight neck to see if the brother became cloudy
Chain of Infection
Transmission or bacteria
Pure Culture
A culture from a single parental cell (used when talking about liquid cultures)
Colonies
Distinct populations each grown from a single cell
Robert Koch
Developed germ theory, the first guidelines to establish a link between a specific microbe and a disease
Koch’s Postulates
- Microorganism must be present in every case of the disease and be absent from healthy organisms
- The microorganism must be isolated/grown in pure culture
- The same disease must result when the microorganism is inoculates in a healthy host
- The same microorganism must be isolates from a second diseased host
Alexander Fleming
Discovered the Penicillium mold generated a substance that kills bacteria
Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
Purified penicillin, the first commercial antibiotic to save human lives
Sergei Winogradsky
- Among the first to study microbes in their natural habitats
- Discovered lithotrophs
- Developed enrichment cultures
- Built the Windogradsky column
