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Victor Babeș

Victor Babeș

Victor Babeș (Romanian pronunciation:; 28 July 1854 in Vienna – 19 October 1926 in Bucharest) was a Romanian physician, bacteriologist, academician and professor. One of the founders of modern microbiology, Victor Babeș is the author of one of the first treatises of bacteriology in the world – Bacteria and their role in pathological anatomy and histology of infectious diseases, written in collaboration with French scientist Victor André Cornil in 1885. In 1888, Babeș underlined the principle of passive immunity, and a few years later he enunciated the principle of antibiosis. He made early and significant contributions to the study of rabies, leprosy, diphtheria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. He also discovered more than 50 unknown germs and foresaw new methods of stainingbacteria and fungi. Victor Babeș introduced rabies vaccination and founded serotherapy in Romania.

Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timișoara bear his name.