Microbiology and Immunology

WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY Historical Chronology

649

1874 Wilhelm August Oscar Hertwig concludes that fertil-

ization in both animals and plants consists of the

physical union of the two nuclei contributed by the

male and female parents. Hertwig subsequently car-

ries out pioneering studies of reproduction of the sea

urchin.

1875 Eduard Adolf Strasburger publishes Cell-Formation

and Cell-Division, in which he describes nuclear

division in plants. Strasburger accurately describes

the process of mitosis and argues that new nuclei can

only rise from the division of preexisting nuclei. His

treatise helps establish cytology as a distinct branch

of histology.

1875 Ferdinand Cohn publishes a classification of bacte-

ria in which the genus name Bacillusis used for the

first time.

1876 Edouard G. Balbiani observes the formation of chro-

mosomes.

1876 Robert Koch publishes a paper on anthrax that impli-

cates a bacterium as the cause of the disease, validat-

ing the germ theory of disease

1877 Robert Koch describes new techniques for fixing,

staining, and photographing bacteria.

1877 Paul Erlich recognizes the existence of the mast cells

of the immune system.

1877 Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne proposes the term enzyme

(meaning “in yeast”). Kühne establishes the critical

distinction between enzymes, or “ferments,” and the

microorganisms that produce them.

1878 Charles-Emanuel Sedillot introduces the term

“microbe.” The term becomes widely used as a term

for a pathogenic bacterium.

1878 Joseph Lister publishes a paper describing the role

of a bacterium he names Bacterium lactisin the

souring of milk.

1878 Thomas Burrill demonstrates for the first time that a

plant disease (pear blight) is caused by a bacterium

(Micrococcus amylophorous).

1879 Albert Nisser identifies Neiserria gonorrhoeoeas the

cause of gonorrhea.

1879 Walther Flemming describes and names chromatin,

mitosis, and the chromosome threads. Fleming’s

drawings of the longitudinal splitting of chromo-

somes in eukaryotic cells provide the first accurate

counts of chromosome numbers.

1880 C. L. Alphonse Laveran isolates malarial parasites in

erythrocytes of infected people and demonstrates

that the organism can replicate in the cells. He is

awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize in Medicine or

Physiology for this work.

1880 Louis Pasteur develops a method of weakening a

microbial pathogen of chicken, and uses the term

“attenuated” to describe the weakened microbe.

1880 The first issue of the journal Science is published by

the American Association for the Advancement of

Science.

1880 Walther Flemming, Eduard Strasburger, Edouard van

Beneden, and others document the basic outlines of

cell division and the distribution of chromosomes to

the daughter cells.

1881 Eduard Strasburger coins the terms cytoplasm and

nucleoplasm.

1881 Walther Flemming discovers the lampbrush chro-

mosomes.

1882 Angelina Fannie and Walter Hesse in Koch’s labora-

tory develop agar as a solid growth medium for

microorganisms. Agar replaces gelatin as the solid

growth medium of choice in microbiology.

1882 Edouard van Beneden outlines the principles of

genetic continuity of chromosomes in eukaryotic

cells and reports the occurrence of chromosome

reduction during the formation of the germ cells.

1882 Pierre Émile Duclaux suggest that enzymes should

be named by adding the suffix “ase” to the name of

their substrate.

1882 The German bacteriologist Robert Koch

(1843–1910) discovers the tubercle bacillus and enu-

merates “Koch’s postulates,” which define the clas-

sic method of preserving, documenting, and studying

bacteria.

1882 Walther Flemming publishes Cell Substance, Nucleus,

and Cell Division, in which he describes his observa-

tions of the longitudinal division of chromosomes in

animal cells. Flemming observes chromosome threads

in the dividing cells of salamander larvae.

1882 Wilhelm Roux offers a possible explanation for the

function of mitosis.

1883 August F. Weismann begins work on his germplasm

theory of inheritance. Between 1884 and 1888,

Weismann formulates the germplasm theory that

asserts that the germplasm was separate and distinct

from the somatoplasm. He argues that the germplasm

was continuous from generation to generation and

that only changes in the germplasm were transmitted

to further generations. Weismann proposes a theory

of chromosome behavior during cell division and

fertilization and predicts the occurrence of a reduc-

tion division (meiosis) in all sexual organisms.

•

womi_bm 5/6/03 1:30 PM Page 649