Google Doodle: Google celebrates Dr Robert Koch's Nobel Prize win in the field of medicine
The human body is inhabited by millions of tiny living organisms, many of which are germs. In the early days of human civilisation, little was known about these germs because there were precious few advances in the field of medicine. When diseases struck, they would cause untold damage to mankind because of little research. It is worth discussing Robert Koch's life and his contribution to medicine, especially when it comes to his role in producing research that proved diseases like anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera were caused by germs. It is for this reason that Google celebrates Dr Koch's Nobel Prize win for his ground-breaking research with a quirky Google Doodle.
Dr Koch was born in Clausthal in Hanover, Germany on December 11, 1843. It was right at the age of five that he started to show signs of brilliance. At this young age, Dr Koch announced to his parents that he had taught himself to read with the aid of newspapers.
As he grew older, he became interested in medicine and attended to the University of Gottingen, where he became influenced by Jacob Henle, a professor at the university who posited that infectious diseases were caused by living, parasitic organisms.
Dr Koch persisted in carrying out research by studying the anthrax bacillus. He did this by converting his four-room apartment into a make-shift laboratory. Dr Koch obtained pure cultures of the anthrax bacilli and tested them on mice. By using precise methodologies, he demonstrated that the anthrax bacilli could cause anthrax even when the bacilli had no contact with any kind of animals.
Apart from anthrax, Dr Koch carried out research work on cholera by studying samples from India and Egypt, where cholera was an epidemic at the time.
Dr Koch's revolutionary research led to establishing the fact that germs cause diseases. His research on tuberculosis led to him winning the Nobel Prize on this day in 1905.
Google pays tribute to Dr Robert Heinrich Hermann Koch's historical win, by illustrating the original medium he used to isolate bacterial cells: potato slices. Another famous tribute illustrated on the Doodle is the famous Petri dish, developed by Dr Koch's own assistant, Julius Petri.