Who discovered streptococcus agalactiae?

Answer 1

Two individuals worked on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean to isolate streptococcus pneumoniae and grow it in a culture. Louis Pasteur of France was the first to publish his report, in January 1881, after finding the bacteria in the saliva of a youngster with rabies. George Miller Sternberg of the United States sampled his own saliva and successfully grew the bacteria as a culture in September 1880, but did not publish his report until April 1881.

In 1911, scientists attempted to find an effective vaccine against the pneumonia caused by streptococcus pneumoniae. When penicillin came into popular use in the 1940s, patients were inoculated with that in the belief that the penicillin would kill the infection. Many patients died. By the 1960s, a true pneumonia vaccine was again sought. The first pneumococcal vaccine was produced and licensed in November 1977. This vaccine was composed of the 14 serotypes known to cause about 80 percent of all bacteria-caused pneumococcal cases in the United States. Two vaccines which covered 23 serotypes were produced and licensed in July 1983.

The First Isolation of Streptococci

In 1880 French biologist Louis Pasteur, credited with spreading the idea that microbes cause disease, isolated the bacteria that caused pneumonia. He named it "microbe septicemique du salive." That same year in the United States, George Miller Sternberg isolated the same bacteria, naming it Micrococcus pasteuri. Although both were strains of streptococci, it was not until 1974 that the name of the bacteria that Pasteur and Sternberg isolated was changed to Streptococcus pneumoniae.

The Naming of Streptocci

While Pasteur and Sternberg were the first to isolate a strain from this group of bacteria, the name comes from Alexander Ogston, a Scottish Doctor Who detected a group of spherical bacteria arranged in chains. Because of their appearance, he named them Streptococci, from the Greek word "streptos," meaning "twisted."

Answer 2

Streptococcus agalactiae was first discovered by Dr. Rebecca Lancefield in 1930. She identified the bacteria as a cause of bovine mastitis in cows, hence its name "agalactiae," which means 'without milk.'