by Elio
Wouldn’t you be tempted to attend such a session if it were part of a current-day ASM meeting? The first five papers ever delivered to a meeting of the Society of American Bacteriologist (now the ASM) are so utterly relevant to our concerns that they could be delivered now. No changes to the titles would be needed. I would be particularly eager to hear the paper on “Some Suggestions for the Study of Systematic Bacteriology.” Plus ça change...
Thanks to the Center for the History of Microbiology/ASM Archives
I wonder if, seeing how E. coli is referred to by several of the other speakers as "(B)acillus coli", the speaker giving the talk on "Generic Nomenclature in Bacteria" started with "First of all, we need to have actual genera in this field. Calling everything Bacillus just because it is rod shaped isn't very helpful". Although speaking of generic names, looking it up, I see that even before Bacillus coli, E.coli was called "Bacterium coli" -- now *that's* a generic name!
Elio replies:
The cocci had it better. I believe that their genera precede those of rods. Maybe because they don't all look alike. But the genesis of genera is a topic worth studying. Anyone?
Posted by: Jonathan Badger | August 06, 2013 at 01:29 PM