Microbiology

Microbiology is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being unicellular (single
cell), multicellular (cell colony), or acellular (lacking cells).[1][2] Microbiology
encompasses numerous sub-disciplines
including virology, bacteriology, protistology, mycology, immunology,
and parasitology.

The existence of microorganisms was predicted many centuries before they were first
observed, for example by the Jains in India and by Marcus Terentius Varro in ancient
Rome. The first recorded microscope observation was of the fruiting bodies of moulds,
by Robert Hooke in 1666, but the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher was likely the first
to see microbes, which he mentioned observing in milk and putrid material in
1658. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is considered a father of microbiology as he
observed and experimented with microscopic organisms in the 1670s, using
simple microscopes of his own design. Scientific microbiology developed in the 19th
century through the work of Louis Pasteur and in medical microbiology Robert Koch.