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Anton Van leeuwenhoek
Anton, a Dutch cloth merchant, was the first person tosee bacteria. During the 1660s he started to grind glass lenses to make better magnifyinglenses so he could examine the weave of cloth more easily. Leeuwenhoek sent a report of his sightings of bacteria and algae to the Royal Society inLondon in the late 1670s with many detailed drawings. These still exist today and it isobvious that, as well as algae and other single-celled plants and animals, he also sawsome of the larger bacteria. -
Francesco Redi
He was a Italian physician and poet. He believed that maggots developed from eggs laid by flies. Totest his hypothesis, he set out meat in a variety of flasks, some open to the air, some sealedcompletely, and others covered with gauze. As he had expected, maggots appeared only in theopen flasks in which the flies could reach the meat and lay their eggs.As he had expected, maggots appeared only in theopen flasks in which the flies could reach the meat and lay their eggs. -
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Disease and Defence
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Edward Jenner
was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. He is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human". -
John Snow
He was an English physician and a leader in the adoption of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854. His findings inspired fundamental changes in the water and waste systems of London, which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world. -
Robert Koch
He was a celebrated German physician and pioneering microbiologist. The founder of modern bacteriology, he is known for his role in identifying the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax and for giving experimental support for the concept of infectious disease. -
Joseph Lister
known as Sir Joseph Lister, Bt., between 1883 and 1897, was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery. By applying Louis Pasteur's advances in microbiology, he promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Lister successfully introduced carbolic acid (now known as phenol) to sterilise surgical instruments and to clean wounds, which led to a reduction in post-operative infections and made surgery safer for patients. -
Ignaz Semmelweis
The germ theory of disease (i.e. that disease was caused by smallmicroorganisms or ‘germs’) was not really fully developed until the 1870sbut, 30 years before this, a doctor in Vienna called Ignaz Semmelweis madea discovery that was very important but not accepted at all at the time.Semmelweis worked in a maternity hospital where the death rate of mothersand babies was extremely high because of an infection commonly known aschild bed fever or puerperal fever. -
Louis Pasture
He was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. -
Alexander Fleming
was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain
