Ronald Ross (English: Ronald Ross, born- 13 May, 1857, Almora, Uttarakhand; died- 16 September, 1932) was a British physician and ‘Nobel Prize’ winner. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902. He was given this award for discovering the life cycle of malaria parasite Plasmodium. Ronald Ross was born in a village in Almora district in Kumaon of Uttarakhand state of India. Ross was also a great writer. He also wrote many poems on important stages of his life. He loved writing since childhood. He knew very well how to put his feelings and emotions into words.
Ronald Ross was born on May 13, 1857 in Almora, Uttarakhand, India, just three days after the country’s first war of independence began. He was the eldest of ten children of Sir Campbell Ross, a Scottish officer in the British Raj’s Indian Army. Young Ronald was interested in becoming a poet or writer. He enjoyed solving mathematical problems. At that time, officers of the Indian Medical Service were paid very well and there were many opportunities for advancement, so his father wanted to see him become an officer of the Indian Medical Service.
After schooling in England, Ronald Ross took admission in St. Bartholomew Medical School in London under pressure from his father. After completing his medical education, he reluctantly appeared for the Indian Medical Service entrance examination and failed. Under pressure from his father, he again appeared for the examination the next year and came 17th among 24 successful students. After four months of training in the Army Medical School, he joined the Indian Medical Service and his father’s dream came true.
He got the opportunity to work in the less prestigious Madras Presidency instead of Calcutta (present Kolkata) or Bombay (present Mumbai). There, most of his work was to treat soldiers suffering from malaria. Patients were cured with quinine, but malaria spread so fast that many patients could not get treatment and died. Due to some reason, he left India again in 1888 and went to England, where he studied bacteriology in depth under the guidance of surgeons of the Royal College and Professor E. Klein. On returning to India again in 1889, he did theory and research on malaria during his service period. Whenever a patient with fever came to him, he would save his blood sample and study it for hours under a microscope. As a result, his achievement is well known today.
Ronald Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria. He received many other honours. In 1901 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Royal Society, of which he was Vice-President from 1911 to 1913. In 1902 he was appointed a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath by King Edward VII. In Ludhiana, the Christian Medical College named its hostel as Ross Hostel. The young doctors there often refer to themselves as “Rossians”. In memory of Ronald Ross, the ‘Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Parasitology’ was established in Hyderabad under Osmania University.
Ronald Ross died on September 16, 1932 in London.