Theodor Escherich

Theodor Escherich
University of Munich University of Graz
Doctoral advisor	Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt
Signature

Theodor Escherich (German pronunciation: [ˈteːodoːɐ̯ ˈʔɛʃəʁɪç]; 29 November 1857 – 15 February 1911) was a German-Austrian pediatrician and a professor at universities in Graz and Vienna. He discovered and described the bacterium Escherichia coli.^[1]

Life and achievements

Family and education

Theodor Escherich was born in

After a half-year military service in Strasbourg, Escherich took up his studies of medicine at the University of Würzburg in the winter term of 1876. Later, he attended the universities of Kiel and Berlin, and returned to Würzburg before passing his medical examination with excellence in December 1881.

Medical career in Würzburg and Munich (1882−1890)

After an 18-month service in a military hospital in

Discovery of Escherichia coli

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 in Stuttgart, 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 called Escherichia coli.^[3] For the next four years, Escherich worked as first assistant to Heinrich von Ranke at the Munich Von Haunersche Kinderklinik.

Professor of Pediatrics in Graz and Vienna (1890−1911)

In 1890, Escherich succeeded Rudolf 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 physicist Leopold 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 the St.-Anna-Kinderspital (St. Anna Children's Hospital).

Escherich became renowned in 1903 when he founded the Säuglingsschutz (Infant Defence Society) and started a high-profile campaign for breastfeeding. He died in Vienna in 1911.

Honors

• 1894 — Honorary member of the Moscow Pediatric Society
• 1905 — Honorary member of the American Pediatric Society
• 1905 — Member of the
  St. Louis
• 1906 — Awarded title of
  kaiserlich-königlicher Hofrat
  (Official Imperial and Royal Privy Councillor)
• 1906 — Member of the Medical Academy in Rome
• 1909 — Honorary member of the Belgian Liga de la Protection de la Première Enfance