An expert in his field

An expert in his field

I needed a suspension containing Legionella pneumophila. It needed to be a smooth suspension, in microbiology terms, single cells suspended in saline. Try this from an agar plate culture of L. pneumophila and the task is impossible. The colonies grow nicely enough but try to transfer colonies from the plate to a suspension and, oh…

A little text book

A little text book

Beginning my career in clinical microbiology at age 18 years along with fellow students we were provided with a list of recommended textbooks from the college we attended. These reference books became the backbone of our studies and have particularly remained with me as exemplary sources of information in my subject throughout my life. Some…

A true disciple of Robert Koch

A true disciple of Robert Koch

Following my success at passing the IBMS Fellowship examination in Medical Microbiology, I spent a year working at one of the largest microbiology departments in the UK, based in South Manchester at Withington Hospital. A jointly located hospital and Public Health Laboratory, this place certainly contained several real characters. One I remember was Consultant Epidemiologist,…