Theodor Albrecht Edwin Klebs (6 February 1834 – 23 October 1913) was a German-Swiss microbiologist. He is mainly known for his work on infectious diseases. His works paved the way for the beginning of modern bacteriology, and inspired Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. He was the first to identify a bacterium that causes diphtheria, which was called Klebs–Loeffler bacterium (now Corynebacterium diphtheriae). He was the father of physician Arnold Klebs.
Wilhelm Kolle (born 2 November 1868 in Lerbach near Osterode am Harz, died 10 May 1935) was a German bacteriologist and hygienist. He served as the second director of the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy, succeeding its founder, the Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich. He was also the original author, with Heinrich Hetsch, of the famous book Experimental Bacteriology, one of the most authoritative works in microbiology in the first half of the 20th century.
Following studies of medicine at the universities of Göttingen, Halle and Würzburg, he became an assistant to Robert Koch at the Institut für Infektionskrankheiten (Institute for Infectious Diseases) in Berlin (1893–97). In 1897–98 he performed research of rinderpest and leprosy in South Africa, and in 1900, on behalf of the Egyptian government, studied rinderpest in Sudan.
In 1901 he became departmental head at the Institut für Infektionskrankheiten, followed by an appointment as professor of hygiene and bacteriology at the University of Bern (1906). As a military physician and hygienist during World War I, he was highly successful in vaccination against diphtheria and cholera. In 1917, he became director of the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy and of the Georg Speyer House in Frankfurt am Main.
Kolle made numerous contributions in the fields of serology, microbiology and chemotherapy. He is credited with the development of an anti-meningococcus serum, as well as a vaccine against rinderpest. He introduced an improved Salvarsan preparation for treatment of syphilis, and in 1896 developed a heat-inactivated cholera vaccine that was used extensively during the 20th century.He was the father of the painter Helmut Kolle (1899–1931).
Theodor Langhans (28 September 1839 – 22 October 1915) was a German pathologist who was a native of Usingen, Duchy of Nassau.
He studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, and at the University of Göttingen under Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle (1809–1885), at Berlin under Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) and in Würzburg, where he became an assistant to Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen (1833–1910). In 1867 he became a lecturer at the University of Marburg, and in 1872 became a full professor of pathology at the University of Giessen, where he succeeded Ludwig Franz Alexander Winther (1812–1871).
From 1872 until 1912, Langhans was a professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Bern, where one of his assistants was surgeon Fritz de Quervain (1868–1940). He also worked with Serafina Schachova on kidney anatomy research using a canine model of induced nephritis.Langhans is remembered for his discovery of multi-nucleated giant cells that are found in granulomatous conditions, and are now referred to as Langhans giant cells.