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Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932)The first Briton ever to be awarded a Nobel prize,
the world-renowned malariologist, Sir Ronald Ross, spent a significant
period of his career at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Ross was born in India in 1857 but gained his medical training in England. He joined the Indian Medical Service and while in India formed an interest in malaria and the belief that the mosquito was involved with the spread of the malaria parasite. Ross used his time in India to conduct long-term investigation into the mode of malaria transmission. Through his experiments he identified the Anopheles Mosquito as the carrier of the malaria parasite. He was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902 for this momentous discovery. Ross returned to England in February 1899, retiring from the Indian Medical Service. He then took up the post of lecturer in Tropical Diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. This was his first academic appointment. Ross possessed a firm conviction that sanitary reform as a means of controlling mosquito populations was fundamental to preventing the spread of malaria. While at the School he participated in Malaria Expeditions to Sierra Leone (1899 and 1901) and to Lagos (1901) during which he instructed and advised local people in making sanitary improvements to eliminate mosquito breeding places. He organised gangs of local labourers into "Mosquito Brigades". They removed litter where mosquitoes might breed and repaired footpaths, streets and drainage facilities, to render them unsuitable for mosquito breeding. Ross also travelled to the United States in 1904, and visited Panama to observe malaria and yellow fever control measures. He also published several short works which accompanied his work in the area of Public Health, including Instructions for the Prevention of Malarial Fever (1899) and Mosquito Brigades and How to Organise Them (1902). A larger and more significant publication was The Prevention of Malaria (1910). His later years at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine were somewhat strained. Ross saw himself as having been bypassed in favour of Rubert Boyce for the Deanship of the School, while the School's precarious finances meant that his lectureship was not to be made permanent for a number of years. He received an Honorary Chair only in 1912. He complained regularly that he was underpaid in relation to his contribution to knowledge and human health. Ross moved to London in 1912 to take up post as consultant physician at King's College Hospital, although he continued to lecture in Liverpool until 1916 when his war duties prevented him from fulfilling his teaching commitments. In 1926 the Ross Institute in London was established in his honour and was incorporated into the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1934. Ronald Ross died on 16 September 1932 and is remembered for his fundamental and vital contribution to our understanding of malaria.
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