In any microbiology laboratory in the world we can find small transparent circular boxes made up of two pieces known as Petri dishes . Its name comes from a scientist who, thanks to this great idea, has allowed thousands of scientists to grow fungi, bacteria and all kinds of microorganisms under controlled conditions.
Julius Richard Petri was born on May 31, 1852, and although he did not win a Nobel Prize, he was a fundamental scientist in the history of microbiology. After studying at the Kaiser Wilhelm-Akademie military academy for physicians and obtaining a doctorate at the Charité Clinic in Berlin, in 1876 he was working for the famous Robert Koch, Nobel laureate in Physiology and Medicine in 1905. And it was precisely while collaborating with the famous German scientist when he invented his famous Petri dish.
He basically joined two round transparent glass lids that allowed to isolate the samples of different microorganisms and make them grow under controlled conditions. What seemed simple and now more than normal, at the time was a true revolution for microbiology and medicine .
And it is that during the XIX century, great contagious epidemics were reducing the population of half the world. Thanks to the Petri dishes, it was possible to isolate the microorganisms that caused diseases such as cholera or diphtheria, later finding a cure for them.
