Robert Koch

Robert Koch was a German physician and microbiologist who, alongside Louis Pasteur, is credited as a founder of germ theory and of bacteriology as a discipline. His 1876 identification of the anthrax bacillus life cycle and 1882 identification of the tuberculosis bacillus led him to formulate Koch's postulates, published in developed form in 1884, a set of criteria for establishing that a specific microorganism causes a specific disease that remains a foundational standard in medical microbiology. He was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his tuberculosis research.