Discovery of Malaria

QUESTION

Who was the discoverer of malaria?

ANSWER

Malaria has been known to humans since ancient times, though what exactly caused it and how it was transmitted was not known. The parasite which causes malaria, from the genus Plasmodium, was first observed in the blood of a patient who had died from the disease by Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French physician working in Algeria. This was in 1880; a few years later, in 1897-1898, a British army doctor called Ronald Ross showed that malaria could be transmitted via the bite of a mosquito. Both doctors eventually received the Nobel Prize for their discoveries.