Julius petri contribution to microbiology...
The big story: the petri dish
Scientists use them every day and discard them without a second thought.
When was the petri dish invented
They are ubiquitous, disposable and often disregarded. They are, of course, Petri dishes. These well-known shallow and lidded plastic plates haves been used to grow bacterial cultures for many years, serving a variety of uses, such as testing the virulence of bacterial cultures or examining the efficacy of antibiotic drugs in development.
When the scarlet fever bacteria, Streptococcus pyogenes, was found to grow in milk in the 1920s, studies were performed using Petri dishes to show the importance of keeping milk refrigerated 1. Other studies showed how Petri dishes, once inoculated with bacteria, could be incubated in aerobic, micro-aerophilic and anaerobic conditions to grow a variety of organisms or by adding a metal cover to prevent moisture loss and the dehydration of the media 2-4.
The plates, originally made of glass, are now made of disposable plastics and used by l