Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (born c. 1478, Verona, Republic of Venice [now in Italy]—died Aug. 8, 1553, Caffi [now Affi], near Verona) was an Italian physician, poet, astronomer, and geologist, who proposed a scientific germ theory of disease more than 300 years before its empirical formulation by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. At the University of Padua Fracastoro was a colleague of the astronomer Copernicus. As a physician, he maintained a private practice in Verona. He is...