text: In 1932, it was reported that dinitrogen gas was generated via an unknown mechanism during fermentation in the sediments of Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, USA. In 1965, F. A. Richards noticed that most of the ammonium that should be produced during the anaerobic remineralization of organic matter was unaccounted for. As there was no known biological pathway for this transformation, biological anaerobic oxidation of ammonium received little further attention. 
  In 1977, Engelbert Broda predicted the existence of two chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms capable of oxidizing ammonium to dinitrogen gas on the basis of thermodynamic calculations. It was thought that anaerobic oxidation of ammonium would not be feasible, assuming that the predecessors had tried and failed to establish a biological basis for those reactions. By the 1990s, Arnold Mulders observations were just consistent with Richards suggestion. In their anoxic denitrifying pilot reactor, ammonium disappeared at the expense of nitrite with a clear nitrogen production. The reactor used the effluent from a methanogenic pilot reactor, which contained ammonium, sulphide and other compounds, and nitrate from a nitrifying plant as the influent. The process was named "anammox," and was realized to have great significance in the removal of unwanted ammonium. 
  The discovery of the anammox process was first publicly presented at the 5th European congress on biotechnology. By the mid-1990s, the discovery of anammox in the fluidized bed reactor was published. A maximum ammonium removal rate of 0.4 kg N/m/d was achieved. It was shown that for every mole of ammonium consumed, 0.6 mol of nitrate was required, resulting in the formation of 0.8 mol of  gas. 
  In 1995, the biological nature of anammox was identified. Labeling experiments with  in combination with  showed that  was the dominant product making up 98.2% of the total labeled . It was realized that, instead of nitrate, nitrite was assumed as the oxidizing agent of ammonium in anammox reaction. Based on a previous study, Strous et al. calculated the stoichiometry of anammox process by mass balancing, which is widely accepted by other groups. Later, anammox bacteria were identified as Planctomycetota, and the first identified anammox organism was named Candidatus "Brocadia anammoxidans." 
  Before 2002, anammox was assumed to be a minor player in the nitrogen cycle within natural ecosystems. In 2002 however, anammox was found to play an important part in the biological nitrogen cycle, accounting for 24–67% of the total  production in the continental shelf sediments that were studied. The discovery of anammox process modified the concept of biological nitrogen cycle, as depicted in Figure 2.