Models of cell growth and division in bacteria were considered more than 60 years ago. The evolution of models of bacterial growth was closely followed by the development of models of the cell cycle in budding and fission yeast, cell cultures, and mammalian cells. In some of these theoretical models, new mechanisms have been hypothesized, which later have been confirmed in experiments on spontaneous and induced mutations, signal transduction pathways, cell cycle regulation, and programmed cell death. Thus, for many years, modeling of the bacterial cell cycle has been a “proving ground” for refinement of theoretical models in cell biology. The major questions addressed in bacterial growth models have included: stochastic and deterministic models of cell population dynamics; different models of the cell cycle in individual cells, such as growth control, random transition, and mitotic clocks; generational dependence models; unequal cell-division models; spontaneous mutation models and fluctuation tests.