Chemostat (continuous culture of microorganisms)
Quimiostato (cultivo continuo de microorganismos)
- Date
- 1950 · confidence high
- Place
- Pasteur Institute, Paris, France
- Credited to
- Jacques Monod; Aaron Novick and Leo Szilard
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Apparatus that holds a culture in steady state by supplying fresh nutrient and removing medium at a constant flow, so that the flow rate sets the growth rate. It underlies quantitative microbial physiology and continuous fermentation.
Monod (Paris) and Novick and Szilard (Chicago) described it independently in 1950; Novick and Szilard called it “chemostat” and Monod “bactogène”. There is no consensus on a single priority.
What it led to
- growth kinetics and experimental evolution studies in bacteria
- continuous fermentation in industry (yeast, single-cell protein)
- models of microbial ecology and biological wastewater treatment