[1] He was the eldest of ten children of Sir Campbell Claye Grant Ross, a general in the British Indian Army, and Matilda Charlotte Elderton.

[5] Although Ross wanted to become a writer, his father arranged enrollment at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College in London, in 1874.

In 1883, he was posted as the Acting Garrison Surgeon at Bangalore during which he noticed the possibility of controlling mosquitoes by limiting their access to water.

[8] Even before his luggage was cleared in the custom office, he went straight for Bombay Civil Hospital, looking for malarial patients and started making blood films.

Ross made his first important step in May 1895 when he observed the early stages of malarial parasite inside a mosquito stomach.

[2][9] After two years of research failure, in July 1897, Ross managed to culture 20 adult "brown" mosquitoes from collected larvae.

On 20 August he confirmed the presence of the malarial parasite inside the gut of mosquito, which he originally identified as "dappled-wings" (which turned out to be a species of the genus Anopheles).

At His command, Seeking His secret deeds With tears and toiling breath, I find thy cunning seeds, O million-murdering Death.

As Calcutta was not a malarious place, Manson persuaded him to use birds, as being used by other scientists such as Vasily Danilewsky in Russia and William George MacCallum in America.

[15] Using more convenient model of birds (infected sparrows), by July 1898 Ross established the importance of culex mosquitoes as intermediate hosts in avian malaria.

He was invited to work there by Graham Col Ville Ramsay, the second Medical Officer of the Labac Tea Estate Hospital.

In 1899, Ross resigned from the Indian Medical Service and went to England to join the faculty of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as a lecturer.

He travelled to Thessaloniki and Italy in November to advise and on the way, "in a landlocked bay close to the Leucadian Rock (where Sappho is supposed to have drowned herself)", his ship escaped a torpedo attack.

[28] Between 1913 and 1917, he received some financial support from Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, and led experiments at the Marcus Beck laboratory in the Royal Society of Medicine building at 1 Wimpole Street, London.

Ronald Ross was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the life cycle of the malarial parasite in birds.

[2] Ross was the first to show that malarial parasite was transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes, in his case the avian Plasmodium relictum.

[37] Ross was frequently embittered by lack of government support (what he called "administrative barbarism")[4] for scientists in medical research.

In 1928 he advertised his papers for sale in the journal Science Progress in the Twentieth Century (1919–1933), with a statement that the money was for financial support of his wife and family.

The papers are now preserved by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine[3][38] and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

[45] Sir Ronald Ross is one of 23 names to feature on the frieze of London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, pioneers chosen for their contributions to public health.

His poetic works gained him wide acclaim and they reflect his medical service, travelogue, philosophical and scientific thoughts.

Some of his notable books are The Child of Ocean (1899 and 1932), The Revels of Orsera, The Spirit of Storm, Fables and Satires (1930), Lyra Modulatu (1931), and five mathematical works (1929–1931).

He carefully saved virtually everything about himself: correspondence, telegrams, newspaper cuttings, drafts of published and unpublished material, and all manner of ephemera.

[4] Ronald Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it".

[48] 20 August is celebrated by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine as World Mosquito Day to commemorate Ross's discovery in 1897.

[49] Additionally, Ross's name, along with 22 other pioneers of public health and tropical medicine, appears on the School's Frieze.

[50] The papers of Sir Ronald Ross are now preserved by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine[3][38] and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

degree in Stockholm in 1910 at the centenary celebration of the Caroline Institute and his 1923 autobiography Memoirs was awarded that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

While his vivacity and single-minded search for truth caused friction with some people, he enjoyed a vast circle of friends in Europe, Asia and the United States who respected him for his personality as well as for his genius.

[3] In India, Ross is remembered with great respect as a result of his work on malaria, the deadly epidemic which used to claim thousands of lives every year.