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Robert Koch ,the winner of the Nobel prize for Physiology,is considered to be one of the founders of microbiology especially bacteriology.His discovery about anthrax was one of the major contributions to the field of medicine.The famous KOCH POSTULATES form the important part in microbiology.

Robert Koch was born on December 11, 1843, at Clausthal in the Upper Harz Mountains. The son of a mining engineer, he astounded his parents at the age of five by telling them that he had, with the aid of the newspapers, taught himself to read, a feat which foreshadowed the intelligence and methodical persistence which were to be so characteristic of him in later life. He attended the local high school and there showed an interest in biology and, like his father, a strong urge to travel.

In 1862 Koch went to the University of Gttingen to study medicine. Here the Professor of Anatomy was Jacob Henley and Koch was, no doubt, influenced by Henley's view, published in 1840, that infectious diseases were caused by living, parasitic organisms. After taking his M.D. degree in 1866, Koch went to Berlin for six months of chemical study and there came under the influence of Virchow. In 1867 he settled, after a period as Assistant in the General Hospital at Hamburg, in general practice, first at Langenhagen and soon after, in 1869, at Rackwitz, in the Province of Po sen. Here he passed his District Medical Officer's Examination.
In 1870 he volunteered for service in the Franco-Prussian war and from 1872 to 1880 he was District Medical Officer for Wollstein. It was here that he carried out the epoch-making researches which placed him at one step in the front rank of scientific workers.

Anthrax was, at that time, prevalent among the farm animals in the Wollstein district and Koch, although he had no scientific equipment and was cut off entirely from libraries and contact with other scientific workers, embarked, in spite of the demands made on him by his busy practice, on a study of this disease. His laboratory was the 4-roomed flat that was his home, and his equipment, apart from the microscope given to him by his wife, he provided for himself. Earlier the anthrax bacillus had been discovered by Pollender, Rayer and Davaine, and Koch set himself to prove scientifically that this bacillus is, in fact, the cause of the disease. He inoculated mice, by means of home-made slivers of wood, with anthrax bacilli taken from the spleens of farm animals that had

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