1. Ronald Ross worked in the Indian Medical Service for 25 years.
46 Facts About Ronald Ross
1. 2.
Ronald Ross was born in Almora, then in the North-Western Provinces of Company-ruled India, north west of Nepal.
3.
Ronald Ross was the eldest of ten children of Sir Campbell Claye Grant Ross, a general in the British Indian Army, and Matilda Charlotte Elderton.
4.
Ronald Ross attended Primary schools at Ryde, and for secondary education he was sent to a boarding school at Springhill, near Southampton, in 1869.
5.
Ronald Ross embarked for India on 22 September 1881 on the troopship Jumma.
6.
Manson who became Ronald Ross's mentor, introduced him to the real problems in malaria research.
7.
Ronald Ross made his first important step in May 1895 when he observed the early stages of malarial parasite inside a mosquito stomach.
8.
In September 1897, Ronald Ross was transferred to Bombay, from where he was sent to malaria-free Kherwara in Rajputana.
9.
Ronald Ross immediately carried out research in malaria and Visceral leishmaniasis, for which he was assigned.
10.
Ronald Ross was given the use of Surgeon-Lieutenant-General Cunningham's laboratory for his research.
11.
Ronald Ross had no success with malarial patients because they were always immediately given medication.
12.
Ronald Ross built a bungalow with a laboratory at Mahanad village, where he would stay from time to time to collect mosquitoes in and around the village.
13.
Ronald Ross complied but with a complaint that he "did not need to be in India to study bird malaria".
14.
Ronald Ross later demonstrated the transmission of malarial parasite from mosquitoes to healthy sparrows from an infected one, thus, establishing the complete life cycle of malarial parasite.
15.
Ronald Ross was invited to work there by Graham Col Ville Ramsay, the second Medical Officer of the Labac Tea Estate Hospital.
16.
In 1899, Ronald Ross resigned from the Indian Medical Service and went to England to join the faculty of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as a lecturer.
17.
Ronald Ross continued to work on prevention of malaria in different parts of the world, including West Africa, the Suez Canal zone, Greece, Mauritius, Cyprus, and in the areas affected by the First World War.
18.
Ronald Ross established organisations for fighting malaria in India and Sri Lanka.
19.
Ronald Ross was appointed as Professor and Chair of Tropical Medicine of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1902, which he held up to 1912.
20.
Ronald Ross remained in these posts until 1917 when he became Consultant in Malariology in British War Office.
21.
Ronald Ross developed mathematical models for the study of malaria epidemiology, which he initiated in his report on Mauritius in 1908.
22.
Ronald Ross elaborated the concept in his book The Prevention of Malaria in 1910 and further elaborated in a more generalised form in scientific papers published by the Royal Society in 1915 and 1916; some of his epidemiology work was developed with mathematician Hilda Hudson.
23.
Ronald Ross was one of the supporters of Sir William Osler in the founding of the History of Medicine Society in 1912, and in 1913 was the history of medicine section's vice-president.
24.
Ronald Ross was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the life cycle of the malarial parasite in birds.
25.
Ronald Ross did not build his concept of malarial transmission in humans, but in birds.
26.
Ronald Ross was the first to show that malarial parasite was transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes, in his case the avian Plasmodium relictum.
27.
Ronald Ross was openly envious of his mentor Patrick Manson's affluence from private practices.
28.
Ronald Ross's Memories of Sir Patrick Manson was a direct attempt to belittle Manson's influences on his works on malaria.
29.
Ronald Ross hardly had good ties with the administration of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, complaining of being underpaid.
30.
Ronald Ross resigned twice, and was eventually discharged without any pension.
31.
Ronald Ross was frequently embittered by lack of government support for scientists in medical research.
32.
Ronald Ross died at the hospital of his namesake after a long illness and asthma attack.
33.
Ronald Ross was buried at the nearby Putney Vale Cemetery, next to his wife.
34.
The laboratory where Ronald Ross worked has been transferred into a malaria clinic named after him.
35.
Ronald Ross habitually wrote poems on most of the important events in his life.
36.
Ronald Ross compiled an extensive account The Prevention of Malaria in 1910 and another Studies on Malaria in 1928.
37.
Ronald Ross published his autobiography Memoirs, with a Full Account of the Great Malaria Problem and its Solution in 1923.
38.
Ronald Ross carefully saved virtually everything about himself: correspondence, telegrams, newspaper cuttings, drafts of published and unpublished material, and all manner of ephemera.
39.
Ronald Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it".
40.
The papers of Sir Ronald Ross are now preserved by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
41.
Ronald Ross was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1901 and of the Royal College of Surgeons in the same year.
42.
Ronald Ross was appointed vice-president of the Royal Society from 1911 to 1913.
43.
Ronald Ross was decorated with the title Officer of the Order of Leopold II of Belgium.
44.
Ronald Ross received honorary membership of learned societies of most countries in Europe, and elsewhere.
45.
In India, Ronald Ross is remembered with great respect as a result of his work on malaria, the deadly epidemic which used to claim thousands of lives every year.
46.
In 2010 the University of Liverpool named its new biological science building "The Ronald Ross Building" in his honour.