Julius Richard Petri’s 161st birthday: Google pays tribute to inventor of the Petri dish

Zee Media Bureau\Philaso G Kaping

New Delhi: Google is celebrating scientist Julius Richard Petri’s 161st birth anniversary with an interactive doodle of his invention, the Petri dish. The doodle features six colourful Petri dishes laid out in a row. A gloved hand appears when you click on the yellow dish. It stirs the dishes and in a little while, the microbes start to grow and spell out the Google letters. The dishes show bacteria present in worn socks, door knob, keyboard, pet dog, plant, and a wet sponge complete with animated images. Petri was born in Barmen, Germany on May 31, 1852. He studied medicine at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Academy for Military Physicians and at the Charité Hospital in Berlin. Later, at Imperial Health Office, Julius Richard Petri invented the dish in 1877 while working as an assistant to Robert Koch, the founder of modern bacteriology. Petri died on December 20 in 1921.