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A Petri dish is a shallow glass or plastic cylindrical dish that biologists use to culture cells, which can be bacterial, animal, plant, or fungus. It was named after the German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri (1852–1921) who invented it in 1877 when working as an assistant to Robert Koch. Glass petri dishes can be re-cycled after use by dry heating in a hot air oven at 160 degrees for one hour, while the plastic petri-dishes must be disposed of after use.