Richard Julius Petri

Biography of Richard Julius Petri

Richard Julius Petri studied as an apprentice in the Kaiser Wilhelm-Akademie for military physicians from 1871 to 1875 and then served as a subordinate physician at the Berlin Charité. He received his doctorate in 1876 and until 1882 actively served as a military physician, then in the reserve, and eventually as Oberstabsarzt.

From 1877 to 1879 he was assigned to the Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt where he was assistant to Robert Koch. From 1882 to 1885 head of the Göbersdorf sanatorium, administered by the Imperial Board of Health. A Prussian disciplinarian, he ran the tuberculosis sanatorium on strictly disciplinary lines for both staff and patients. Prior to his appointment he had developed a technique for cloning bacterial strains using an agar slope and sub-culturing onto his dish, recognizing different bacterial colonies and again sub-culturing.

In 1886 Petri became Kustos in the Museum of Hygiene in Berlin, from 1889 Regierungsrat and full member of the Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt, from which he retired in 1900 with the title of Geheimer Regierungsrat (privy councellor).

He was in his later days a rather vain, overweight man, who dressed in the uniform of chief army doctor whenever the opportunity presented itself. The sash around his protuberant abdomen reminded one observer of the equator around the globe.