On August 20th 1897 Ronald Ross, the first Scot to win a Nobel prize, dissected an anopheles mosquito and discovered the link with malaria.
Ronald Ross was born in India in 1857 to Scottish parents, where his father was an army officer. Despite receiving many other awards and honours during his life, he felt embittered that he did not receive monetary reward for his discovery and petitioned the Government on this.
Part of his concern that research workers should receive proper payment and pensions for their work. He was Director-in-Chief of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases from 1926 until his death in 1932.
While Ross is remembered for his malaria work, this remarkable man was also a mathematician, epidemiologist, sanitarian, editor, novelist, dramatist, poet, and an amateur musician, composer and artist! What we would describe as a polymath.
Knighted in 1911, Sir Ronald Ross died on 16th Sep 1932 aged 75 he is buried at Putney Vale Cemetery, London.
A couple of notes of interest is that the while the Nobel Prize had been inaugurated in 1895 it wasn’t until 1901 that prizes for Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded and that a larger than normal percentage of winners either came from Scotland or have Scottish connections, the University of Glasgow itself boasts seven Nobel Prize winners while Edinburgh University is associated with 20!
