On Mar. 24, 1882, German scientist Robert Koch announced to the Berlin Physiological Society that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis.

Three weeks later, on April 10, Koch published an article entitled “The Etiology of Tuberculosis” and in 1884, in a second paper with the same title, he first expounded “Koch’s postulates,” which have since become basic to studies of all infectious diseases.

In 1905, Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine “for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis.”