Ross, Sir Ronald

Ross, Sir Ronald, 1857–1932, English physician, b. Almora, India. He studied malaria in India as a member (1881–99) of the Indian Medical Service, was professor of tropical medicine at University College, Liverpool, from 1902, and directed the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases, London, from 1926. In 1898 he demonstrated the malarial parasite (Plasmodium) in the stomach of the Anopheles mosquito; in W Africa he discovered the mosquito that transmits African fever. He received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on malaria and was knighted in 1911. He also published poems, novels, and mathematical studies.

Bibliography

See his memoirs (1923); J. Rowland, The Mosquito Man (1958).

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Ross, Sir Ronald

(born May 13, 1857, Almora, India—died Sept. 16, 1932, Putney Heath, London, Eng.) British bacteriologist. After earning a medical degree, he entered the Indian Medical Service and served in the third Anglo-Burmese War (1885). He studied bacteriology in London, then returned to India, where he discovered the plasmodium parasite (cause of malaria) in the gastrointestinal tract of the Anopheles mosquito in 1897. He used infected and healthy birds to learn its entire life cycle, including its presence in the mosquito's salivary glands, showing how it is transmitted by a bite. He received a 1902 Nobel Prize.