Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (18 June 1845 – 18 May 1922) was a French physician.

In 1880, while working in the military hospital in Constantine, Algeria, he discovered that the cause of malaria is a protozoan, after observing the parasites in a blood smear taken from a patient who had just died of malaria. He also helped inspire researchers and veternarians today to try and find a cure for malaria in animals.^[1] This was the first time that protozoa were shown to be a cause of disease. He later worked on the trypanosomes, particularly sleeping sickness.^[2] For this work and later discoveries of protozoan diseases he was awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Laveran is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

References

• Nye, Edwin R (2002). "Alphonse Laveran (1845-1922): discoverer of the malarial parasite and Nobel laureate, 1907.". Journal of medical biography 10 (2): pp. 81–7. 2002 May. PMID 11956550. 
• Garnham, P C (1967). "Presidential address: reflections on Laveran, Marchiafava, Golgi, Koch and Danilewsky after sixty years.". Trans. R. Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg. 61 (6): pp. 753–64. doi:10.1016/0035-9203(67)90030-2. PMID 4865951. 
• CDC profile

External links

• Biography Nobelprize.org
• Nobel Lecture