Ronald Ross was born on the 13th of May, 1857 in Almora, north west of Nepal, India, the eldest of ten children of Sir Campbell Ross and Matilda Charlotte Elderton. At the age of eight, he was sent to England to live with his aunt and uncle on the Isle of Wight and from his early childhood developed a passion for poetry, music, literature and mathematics. In 1873, at sixteen, he secured first position in the Oxford and Cambridge local examination in Drawing but although he wanted to become a writer, his father arranged enrollment at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London in 1874. Not fully committed, he spent most of his time composing music, and writing poems and plays. After passing the exams for the Royal College of Surgeons in 1879 he worked as a ship's surgeon on a transatlantic steamship while studying for the licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. Qualifying, he embarked for India on 22 September 1881 and for the next three years was variously posted throughout India. In 1883, he was posted as the Acting Garrison Surgeon at Bangalore during which time he noticed the possibility of controlling mosquitoes by limiting their access to water. In March 1894 he had his home leave and went to London with his family. On 10 April 1894 he met Sir Patrick Manson who became his mentor and introduced him to the real problems in malaria research, as Manson always had a firm belief that India was the best place for the study.
In 1894 he determined to make an experimental investigation in India of the hypothesis of Laveran and Manson that mosquitoes are connected with the propagation of the disease. After two and a half years of failure, Ronald succeeded in demonstrating the life-cycle of the parasites of malaria in mosquitoes, thus establishing the hypothesis of Laveran and Manson. After resigning from his service in India, in 1899 he joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine under the direction of Sir Alfred Jones. He was immediately sent to West Africa to continue his investigations, and there he found the species of mosquitoes which convey the deadly African fever. Since then the School has been unremitting in its efforts to improve health, and especially to reduce the malaria in West Africa. In 1901 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and also a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which he became Vice-President from 1911 to 1913. In 1902 a movement was set on foot to commemorate the valuable services rendered to the School of Tropical Medicine by its originator and Chairman, Sir Alfred Jones, by founding a Chair of Tropical Medicine in University College to be connected with the School. The movement was met with enthusiastic support, and an amount of money was quickly collected sufficient to found the Sir Alfred Jones' Chair of Tropical Medicine. Ronald was appointed to the Professorship in 1902 and retained the Chair until 1912, when he left Liverpool, and was appointed Physician for Tropical Diseases at Kings College Hospital, London, a post which he held together with the Chair of Tropical Sanitation in Liverpool.
During the years he worked in Liverpool he visited Freetown and West Africa in 1899, 1901 and 1902, Ismailia in 1902, Stockholm in 1902 and 1910, Panama in 1904, Greece in 1906, Belgium in 1906, Mauritius in 1907-1908, Bombay in 1908, Russia in 1912 and Spain, Cyprus and Greece in 1913, either to initiate anti-malarial work throughout the world by means of correspondence with the person concerned and by the collection of pamphlets and press cuttings on the work being done. During this period of his life he was still firmly of the opinion that malaria prevention and control was an achievable proposition and that it would only need the resounding success of such a scheme as the Panama Canal Zone to overcome the apathy of governments and public health authorities. To this end therefore he played a very active part in encouraging and advising anti-malarial work and the discovery of the malarial parasite living in the gastrointestinal tract of the Anopheles mosquito helped to eradicate malaria in temperate climates and saved millions of lives. He remained in both posts until 1917, when he was appointed Consultant in Malariology to the War Office. Also in 1902 he was appointed a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of Bath and in 1911 was elevated to the rank of Knight Commander of the same Order. In Belgium, he was made an Officer in the Order of Leopold II.
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| Plaque on the Johnston Building, Liverpool University |
Ronald Ross was noted to be eccentric and egocentric and hardly had good ties with the administration of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, complaining of being underpaid. He resigned twice, and was eventually discharged without any pension. Sir Ronald Ross died in 1932 at the age of 75 after a prolonged illness. In 2012 Liverpool University formally unveiled the cutting-edge Ronald Ross building at its Institute of Infection and Global Health in Crown Street where some two hundred scientists will study infectious diseases and other global health issues.
see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/07/a-liverpool-exemplar-sarah-biffin.html
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