Great microbiologists - a brickfilm

A long time ago I added a video bar on the side of my blog (only on main page), under the following title: "Microbial" videos (live search). The thing uses some microbial-related terms to automatically retrieve videos from YouTube, Google Videos and the like. This way I found a very nice "brickfilm" that is displayed below. The brickfilm (a stop-motion animation using LEGO or other brick-like elements) is called Great microbiologists and takes a funny look at microbiology and its early history. It was made in 2006 to commemorate the graduation of two students from the Microbiology department at Colorado State University. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I do.




Notes and related links:

- About the video bar: "Microbial" videos (live search)
The video bar is only visible on the main page of my blog, not on individual posts. It uses a Google AJAX Search API (whatever this may be) that can be found at Video Bar Wizard. You can use this "wizard" to add a similar video bar to your blog and display either a live search (as I did) or a set of selected channels. Of course, the automated search may retrieve both relevant and totally irrelevant videos, depending on your choice of search terms.

- About the brickfilm "Great microbiologists"
Watch the video at YouTube
Read more information and download the film at Brickfilms.com

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Happy birthday, Microbiology!

According to Institut Pasteur (Lille, France):

"(...) 2007 is the year of the 150th anniversary of Microbiology, born in Lille on August 3rd 1857, when Louis Pasteur, then dean of the Science Faculty at the Lille University, presented his work on lactic acid fermentation at the Société des Sciences de Lille"

(So my congratulations arrive some months late)

I don't know how many people support such a defined birthday for Microbiology (do other sciences have birthdays?). Undoubtedly, Pasteur's work is a major milestone in the study of microbes, from both technical and conceptual points of view, but... was there no microbiology before Pasteur? (see links below)

Anyway, Institut Pasteur and we all have many reasons to celebrate the work of the great scientist, and the anniversary is being celebrated with conferences and other events. Among these, an international scientific symposium will be held at Lille on December 10th-12th, including sessions on Cellular Microbiology, Molecular Microbiology/Genomics, Host-pathogen interaction/immunity, and Virology.


Some links with basic notions on microbiology history:

• Highlights in the History of Microbiology (St. Louis Community College)
  
• A Brief History of Microbiology (MicrobiologyBytes)
• Early History of Microbiology (The Guardians of the Millennium)
• A Brief History of Microbiology (CliffsNotes)

In Spanish:

• Concepto e Historia de la Microbiología (Fac. de Agroindustrias, Argentina)
• Historia de la Microbiología - Personajes históricos (Microbios.com.ar)
• Breve Historia de la Microbiología (es.geocities.com/joakinicu)
• Historia de la Microbiología (Universidad de Salamanca, España)
  

If you know other interesting websites on the history of Microbiology (in any language), you may share them with us by adding a comment to this post (click on "comments" below).

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