Bacterial discovery
The bacteria were first discovered by the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwemhoek (1632-1723) on a tartar of an elderly person who had never brushed his teeth, but at that time people thought that bacteria were naturally produced. Until later, Pasteur used gooseneck experiments to indicate that bacteria were produced by bacteria in the air, rather than self-generating, and invented the "pasteurization method", which was later called "the father of microorganisms".
The term bacteria was originally proposed by the German scientist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876) in 1828 to refer to a certain bacterium. The word comes from the Greek βακτηριον, which means “small stick”.
In 1866, the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) suggested the use of "native organisms", including all single-celled organisms (bacteria, algae, fungi and protozoa).
In 1878, the French surgeon Charles Emmanuel Sedillot (1804-1883) proposed "microorganisms" to describe bacterial cells or more commonly used to refer to tiny organisms.
Because bacteria are single-celled microorganisms that are invisible to the naked eye, they need to be observed with a microscope. In 1683, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) first observed bacteria using a single-lens microscope designed by himself, roughly a magnification of 200 times. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and Robert Koch (1843-1910) pointed out that bacteria can cause disease.