Friedrich Loeffler

Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler (1852 to 1915) was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald. He took his medical degree at the University of Berlin in 1874 and worked with Robert Koch at the Imperial Health Office from 1879 to 1884, then served as staff physician at the Friedrich Wilhelm Institute in Berlin before becoming a professor at Greifswald four years later. His original staining methods gave bacteriology an important and lasting service. Among his discoveries were the organism causing diphtheria, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, and the cause of foot-and-mouth disease, an Aphthovirus. His 1884 description of the diphtheria bacillus was the origin of antitoxin treatment, and he created Loeffler serum, a coagulated blood serum used to detect the bacteria. In 1887 he founded the Centralblatt fuer Bakteriologie und Parasitenkunde. Research institutes at Riems near Greifswald and at the Greifswald medical school carry his name.