author
Sir Ronald Ross
1857–1932
Best known for proving that mosquitoes transmit malaria, this Nobel Prize-winning physician helped change how one of the world's deadliest diseases was understood and fought. His work turned a long-suspected idea into a scientific breakthrough with lasting global impact.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Almora, India, in 1857, Ronald Ross trained in medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and later joined the Indian Medical Service. He began studying malaria in the 1890s, encouraged in part by the tropical medicine pioneer Patrick Manson.
In 1897, while working in India, he showed that the malaria parasite develops inside mosquitoes, helping prove that the disease is spread by certain mosquito species rather than by "bad air" or other older theories. That discovery laid the groundwork for modern malaria research and control, and it earned him the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Ross later worked with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and remained active as a researcher, writer, and advocate for public health. Remembered as both a doctor and a scientist, he played a major role in one of medicine’s most important advances against infectious disease.