Bassi, Agostino (1773–1856)

Italian microbiologist who was the first to demonstrate that microscopic organisms could cause certain infectious diseases. His work preceded that of the Louis Pasteur, who formulated the theory that germs might cause some diseases, in 1868.

At the beginning of the 19th century Bassi studied the silkworm disease muscardine. He discovered 1807 that it was caused by a minute parasitic fungus (the fungus was later named Botrytis bassiana after its discoverer) that was transmitted by infected food and from animal to animal by contact. He went on to describe methods for treating fungally infected worms, which was of considerable interest at the time, as muscardine was causing financial losses to those working in the European silk trade.

Bassi was born 25 September 1773 in a village near Lodi in what was then part of the Austrian Empire but is now a part of Italy. He graduated in law and worked as a civil servant in Italy while devoting much of his spare time to the study of living organisms using an early version of the microscope.

Although Anton van Leeuwenhoek first discovered and described such minute micro-organisms as bacteria 1663, the link between these tiny organisms and the induction of infectious diseases was not recognized for another two hundred years. Bassi was the first to understand this link.