Robert Koch (1843/12/11-1910/05/27)

Abstract

Robert Koch, born in Germany, is regarded as one of the fathers of bacteriology. He was younger than Louis Pasteur by 21 years. He was the first to describe the causative agent of tuberculosis in 1882 and he developed taberculine. He arrived in southern Africa in 1896 at the request of the Cape Colony to help with the eradication of rinderpest. He identified the causal organism of East Coast fever in 1897 which was first named Piroplasma kochi (now Theileria parva).