Robert Koch, the Nobel Prize, and the Ongoing Threat of Tuberculosis

“During my wandering through medicine, I encountered sites where gold was lying around. It needs a lot of serendipity to distinguish gold from ignobility; this however is not a particular achievement.” With these words, spoken on April 12, 1908, at a New York banquet held in his honor by the German Medical Society, German physician and scientist Robert Koch reflected on his life's accomplishments. It is a rather modest statement coming from a man who created a new discipline — medical microbiology — and who was honored, 100 years ago, with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.Although his . . .