Introduction

Fungal species have been at the forefront of developments in microbiology in particular and biology in general ever since the middle of the sixteenth century. Fungi have vital roles in agriculture, medicine and biotechnology. This chapter provides an overview of the role of microbiology in history with emphasis on eukaryotes. After a short introduction into what microbiology encompasses, a historical survey of some milestones in the development of modern microbiology, especially mycology, is given. This also describes where other scientific fields were influenced by fungal research.

Microorganisms and microbiology

Microorganisms are the most widely distributed group of living beings. They are capable of occupying nearly every ecological niche due to the fact that individual microorganisms can grow under extreme conditions, such as temperatures ranging from – 15 °C to more than 100 °C, or in the absence of oxygen or light. Neither animals nor plants are so adaptable; this is also true as regards nutrition. Some microorganisms can even utilize exotic energy sources such as alkanes, inorganic salts, or substituted aromatic compounds.

Generally, the term ‘microorganism’ encompasses all living beings too small to be seen by the human eye without magnification, i.e. smaller than about 1 mm. They are either prokaryotic, e.g. bacteria, or eukaryotic, e.g. hyphal fungi, yeasts and protozoa. We focus here on fungi and yeasts. For historical reasons the term ‘fungus’ is used for filamentously growing microorganisms, whereas yeasts are single-celled eukaryotes. However, taxonomically both are fungi (see Chapter 2).