Whose Experiments Proved That Germs Cause Disease?

French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur conducted a series of experiments in the 1860s that definitively proved that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease, disproving the prevailing theory of spontaneous generation. His famous swan-neck flask experiment showed that broth remained sterile when protected from airborne microbes. Pasteur also developed vaccines for anthrax (1881) and rabies (1885) and invented the process of pasteurisation. Robert Koch independently established rigorous criteria (Koch's postulates) for proving a specific microbe causes a specific disease.