History

Although microbes have been cultivated in pure and mixed cultures for more than 120 years a mathematical interpretation of microbial growth is a relatively recent innovation. A summary of the timeline is shown below.

? Kluyver (~ 1930) Shake-flask technique.

? Monod (1942) Bacterial growth can be formulated in terms of growth yield specific growth rate and the concentration of the growth-limiting substrate.

? Monod (1950); Novick and Szilard (1950) Mathematics of continuous flow cultures.

?  Pirt (1975)  Publishes seminal book  Principles of Microbe  and  Cell Cultivation, summarizing the previous 40 years’ work and  developing these themes.