Famous People Associated with Malaria
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (June 18, 1845 – May 18, 1922) is known as the discoverer of plasmodia (The parasite that causes malaria). He was born in Paris, France. He became a military doctor and then became professor of military diseases and epidemics at the School of Military Medicine of Val-de-Grace in Paris. By age 34 he assembled 63 scientific papers on military diseases and epidemic.
In 1878 Laveran was sent to work at a military hospital in Constantine, Algeria. At the time Constantine was French territory. Laveran began studying malaria hoping to learn what caused it. He examined the blood of people with malaria and organs of people who died from malaria and learned that that both had small grains of black pigment in the blood cells. He concluded that the grains were parasites that caused malaria and wrote a document titled "New Parasite Found in the blood of Several Patients from Marsh Fever."
In 1884 Laveran came back to and worked on Malaria and other diseases at hospitals. He donated the money from the noble prize he got in 1907 to create a lab for studying tropical diseases.
On May 19, 1922 Laveran died. He left a huge impact on malaria research. He wrote over 600 scientific documents and 6 books which helped the future of modern medicine related to parasitic diseases.
