His mother passed her love of nature on to Robert who, at an early age, collected various plants and insects.
Before starting primary school in 1848, Robert taught himself to read and write. At the top of his class during his early school years, he had to repeat his final year. Nevertheless, he graduated in 1862 with good marks in the sciences and mathematics. A university education became available to Robert when his father was once again promoted and the family's finances improved. Robert decided to study natural sciences at Gottingen University, close to his home.
After two semesters, Koch transferred his field of study to medicine. He had dreams of becoming a physician on a ship. His father had traveled widely in Europe and passed a desire for travel on to his son. Although bacteriology was not taught then at the University, Koch would later credit his interest in that field to Jacob Henle , an anatomist who had published a theory of contagion in 1840. Many ideas about contagious diseases, particularly those of chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur , who was challenging the prevailing myth of spontaneous generation, were still being debated in universities in the 1860s.
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