Theodor Escherich | |
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 Theodor Escherich, around 1900 | |
| Born | (1857-11-29)29 November 1857 |
| Died | 15 February 1911(1911-02-15) (aged 53) |
| Nationality | German,Austrian |
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| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Discovery ofEscherichia coli |
| Spouse | Margaretha Pfaundler |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Medicine,pediatrics,bacteriology |
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| Doctoral advisor | Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt |
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Theodor Escherich (German pronunciation:[ˈteːodoːɐ̯ˈʔɛʃəʁɪç]; 29 November 1857 – 15 February 1911) was aGerman-Austrianpediatrician and a professor at universities inGraz andVienna. He discovered and described the bacteriumEscherichia coli.[1]
Theodor Escherich was born inAnsbach, as the younger son ofKreismedizinalrat (District Medical Officer) Ferdinand Escherich (1810−1888), a medicalstatistician, and his second wife, Maria Sophie Frederike von Stromer, daughter of a Bavarian army colonel. When Theodor Escherich was five, his mother died, and five years later Ferdinand Escherich moved toWürzburg to take up his former position asKreismedizinalrat and married his third wife. When Theodor was 12, he was sent to a boarding school run byJesuits inFeldkirch,Austria for three years. Later, he finished secondary education in Würzburg, where he attended aGymnasium (classical language high school) and took hisAbitur examination in 1876.
After a half-year military service inStrasbourg, Escherich took up his studies of medicine at theUniversity of Würzburg in the winter term of 1876. Later, he attended the universities ofKiel andBerlin, and returned to Würzburg before passing his medical examination with excellence in December 1881.
After an 18-month service in a military hospital inMunich, Escherich returned to Würzburg in 1882 to become second and later first assistant to the internistCarl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt in the medical clinic of theJulius Hospital, Würzburg. Gerhardt became Escherich's doctoral advisor and suggested the topic of his thesis.[2] On 27 October 1882, Escherich was awarded hismedical doctorate. In the following two years, he attended lectures in Vienna (with Hermann von Widerhofer and Alois Monti) and didbacteriological research work at the St Anna Children's Clinic. In August 1884, he continued his research work in Munich, where pediatrics had been established as a department of the medical faculty. In October 1884, the Bavarian authorities sent Escherich toNaples to do research work in the actualcholera epidemic. He also travelled toParis, where he heard lectures byJean-Martin Charcot, the renownedneurologist.
In 1886, after intensive laboratory investigations, Escherich published a monograph on the relationship of intestinal bacteria to the physiology of digestion in the infant. This work, presented to the medical faculty in Munich and published inStuttgart,Die Darmbakterien des Säuglings und ihre Beziehungen zur Physiologie der Verdauung (1886) (Enterobacteria of infants and their relation to digestion physiology), was to become his habilitation treatise and established him as the leading bacteriologist in the field of paediatrics.
It was also the publication where Escherich described a bacterium which he called “bacterium coli commune” and which was later to be calledEscherichia coli.[3] For the next four years, Escherich worked as first assistant toHeinrich von Ranke at the MunichVon Haunersche Kinderklinik.
In 1890, Escherich succeededRudolf von Jaksch, who had been called to Prague, as professor extraordinary of pediatrics and director of the St Anna children’s clinic in Graz, where he became professor ordinary four years later. While working in Graz, he married Margarethe Pfaundler (1890−1946), daughter of the physicistLeopold Pfaundler. They had a son Leopold (born 1893), who died at age ten, and a daughter Charlotte (called "Sonny") (born 1895), who survived to the 1980s.
Escherich made the Graz pediatric hospital one of the best-known institutions in Europe.
In 1902, Escherich succeeded Hermann Widerhofer as full professor of pediatrics in Vienna, where he directed theSt.-Anna-Kinderspital (St. Anna Children's Hospital).
Escherich became renowned in 1903 when he founded theSäuglingsschutz (Infant Defence Society) and started a high-profile campaign forbreastfeeding. He died in Vienna in 1911.
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