Microbio Important People

Robert Hooke

• may have been the first to see microorganisms

• coined the word “cell” to describe what he saw while viewing tree bark from a cork oak

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

• first person to accurately describe living microbes

• termed microbes “animalcules”

Francesco Redi

• dishes with meat & flies

• disproved spontaneous generation

Louis Pasteur

• father of microbiology

• swan-necked flasks

• pasteurization

• beginning of germ-theory

John Tyndall

• described heat-resistant microbes from hay infusions

• discontinuous heating used to sterilize

• endospores

Oliver Wendell Holmes

• puerperal fever

• published findings with guidelines to reduce transmission

Ignaz Semmelweis

• hand disinfection

• decreased mortality rate

Joseph Lister

• used carbolic acid to clean hands

• decreased surgical mortality by 15%

• initiated aseptic techniques

Robert Koch

• discovered that specific organisms cause specific diseases

• used pure cultures