Bacterial taxonomy and heat-resistant spores (Cohn)
Sistemática de las bacterias y esporas resistentes (Cohn)
- Date
- 1872-1876 · confidence high
- Place
- Breslau (Wrocław), Lower Silesia, Poland
- Credited to
- Ferdinand Cohn
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
The German botanist classified bacteria into genera in 1872 and defined them as fixed living entities, not phases of other fungi or algae. In 1876 he described the heat-resistant endospores of Bacillus subtilis, which explain why some broths survive boiling.
Cohn's Institute of Plant Physiology at Breslau (then Prussia) hosted Koch in 1876. Cohn is regarded as a founder of bacteriology alongside Pasteur and Koch.
What it led to
- bacteriology as an independent scientific discipline
- publication of Koch's anthrax work in 1876
- sterilisation by repeated heating (tyndallisation)