Cohn, Ferdinand Julius (1828-1898), was a German botanist and pioneer in bacteriology. He became the first to show that bacteria are plantlike organisms. In 1872, he published the first systematic classification of bacteria into genera based upon their form. Cohn’s discovery of heat-resistant spores (reproductive cells) in bacteria helped to finally disprove the theory of spontaneous generation (see Spontaneous generation). He was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland).
