December 2026
THEMATIC EXHIBITION AT SUȚU PALACE
Commemoration of a Major Figure of Romanian Medicine – Victor Babeș
The founder of the Romanian school of microbiology, Dr. Victor Babeș (born 4 July 1854, Vienna – died 19 October 1926, Bucharest), dedicated his life to medical science and to the ways in which it could prevent and cure infectious diseases. He was a bacteriologist, morphopathologist, and university professor. The contribution of the scholar Victor Babeș to the modernization and development of medical science was exceptional, both in Romania and internationally.
Victor Babeș, the renowned Romanian bacteriologist and morphopathologist, is the founder of the Romanian school of microbiology, a member of the Romanian Academy since 1893, a corresponding member of the French Academy, and a three-time laureate of the Paris Academy of Sciences, distinguished with the Montyon and Bréant Prizes. He is one of the founders of modern microbiology and the author of the world’s first treatise on bacteriology — Bacteria and Their Role in the Anatomy and Pathological Histopathology of Infectious Diseases, written in collaboration with the French scientist A. V. Cornil and published in 1885.
He made particularly important contributions to the study of rabies, pellagra, leprosy, diphtheria, and tuberculosis, publishing over 1,300 scientific papers. He identified, in the brain cells of animals suffering from rabies, the Babeș–Negri bodies of diagnostic value; discovered more than 50 new pathogens; and laid the foundations of serotyping. Through his valuable research on microbial antagonisms, he ranked among the precursors of modern ideas regarding antibiotics. He was also concerned with issues of preventive medicine (the supply of drinking water to cities and villages and the scientific organization of anti-epidemic efforts), studying the causes of mass-spreading diseases and highlighting the social problems that contribute to their dissemination.
Through this project, we aim to bring his prolific activity to the attention of the public, focusing on the three areas that made him renowned: those of physician, researcher, and, not least, university professor, both at the Chair of Histopathology at the Faculty of Medicine in Budapest and at the Chairs of Pathological Anatomy and Microbiology within the Faculties of Medicine in Bucharest and Cluj.
Our exhibition project proposes an exploration of Victor Babeș’s scientific activity through the display of documents, manuscripts, correspondence, official records, decisions, photographs, excerpts from courses in general pathological anatomy, and previously unpublished data that belonged to the great scientist.
Curator:
Daniela Simona Olteanu, Museum Curator
Dr. Victor Babeș Museum