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Ronald Ross

Ronald RossBorn: 13-May-1857
Birthplace: Almora, India
Died: 16-Sep-1932
Location of death: London, England
Cause of death: Illness
Remains: Buried, Putney Vale Cemetery and Crematorium, London, England

Gender: Male
Religion: Christian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Scientist

Nationality: England
Executive summary: Discovered malaria parasite in mosquitoes

Scottish physician and bacteriologist Ronald Ross established the link between mosquitoes and malaria, and won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1902. In researching the disease, he allowed Anopheles mosquitoes to feed on a malaria-infected patient, then dissected the insects. On 20 August 1897 he found the the plasmodium parasite in the mosquitoes' gastrointestinal tract, establishing that as Alphonse Laveran had projected, the parasite carries malaria. The following year he showed that mosquitoes that fed on infected birds carried avian malaria. His early research and groundbreaking discovery were conducted largely under the mentorship of Scottish physician Patrick Manson (1884-1922), whose contribution was not noted by the Nobel committee.

Ross spent the rest of his career studying Anopheles, and made numerous trips to advise malaria control efforts in Egypt, Greece, Mauritius, and Panama. He was considered the world's foremost authority on malaria in mosquitoes, but he grew dismayed over the government's unwillingness to expend relatively small sums of money to prevent future epidemics, and over the lack of financial recompense for his work. He was the namesake and founding administrator of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases, which was opened in 1926 and has since been absorbed into the University of London, and for twenty years he edited the journal Science Progress. In addition to his medical work, Ross was also a respected mathematician and a successful novelist and poet.

Father: Sir Campbell Claye Grant Ross (British Army General)
Mother: Matilda Charlotte Elderton (d. 1906)
Wife: Rosa Bessie Bloxam (m. Apr-1889, d. 1931, two sons, two daughters)
Son: Ronald (d. 1914 World War I)
Son: Charles
Daughter: Dorothy (b. 1891, d. 1925)
Daughter: Sylvia (b. 1903)

    High School: Springhill School, Southampton, England (1873)
    Medical School: St. Bartholomew's Hospital, University of London (1879)
    University: BS Public Health, Royal College of Physicians (1889)
    Teacher: Tropical Medicine, University of Liverpool (1899-1902)
    Professor: Tropical Medicine, University of Liverpool (1902-26)
    Administrator: Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases, University of London (1926-32)

    Athenaeum Club (London)
    Indian Medical Service 1881-9
    Order of the Bath
    Royal College of Surgeons 1901
    Royal Society Vice President (1911-13)
    Science Progress Editor (1913-32)
    Parkes Memorial Gold Medal 1895
    Nobel Prize for Medicine 1902
    Royal Medal 1909
    Knighthood Knight Commander of St Michael and St George (1911)
    Officer in the Order of Leopold II 1912
    James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1923 for Memoirs, Etc.
    Scottish Ancestry

Author of books:
The Child of Ocean (1889, novel)
The Spirit of Storm (1896, novel)
Algebra of Space (1901, mathematics)
The Prevention of Malaria (1910, non-fiction)
Psychologies (1919, poetry)
The Revels of Orsera (1920, novel)
Memoirs, with A Full Account of the Great Malaria Problem and Its Solution (1923, memoirs)
Studies on Malaria (1928, non-fiction)
Poems (1928, poetry)
Fables and Satires (1930, poetry)
In Exile (1931, poetry)
The Great Malaria Problem and Its Solution (1988, non-fiction; posthumous; edited from memoirs)


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