Sir (Samuel) Rickard Christophers (27 November 1873 – 19 February 1978)[1] was a British protozoologist and medical entomologist specialising in mosquitoes.
He was born and raised in Liverpool, the son of Samuel Hunt and Kate Christophers and educated at the Liverpool Institute and Liverpool University, graduating MB in 1896.
In 1897 he took part in an Amazonian expedition and in 1898 went to Italy as part of the Malaria Commission, followed by a trip to Africa to study malaria. In 1901 the Malaria Commission moved to India.[2]
On his return to England in 1902 he became a Lieut-Col in the Indian Medical Service, moving back to India in 1904. In 1910 he was appointed the first Director of the Central Malaria Bureau, cordinating anti-malarial training and research throughout India. He spent WWI on anti-malaria duties in Iraq and in 1919 returned again to India as Director of the Central Research Institute at Kasauli in the foothills of the Himalays.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May, 1926.[3] He was the sixteenth president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from 1939 to 1943.
An expert on tropical medicines, Christophers studied many diseases, particularly malaria. His work on the research of this disease won him the Royal Society's 1952 Buchanan Medal for "outstanding research" on the Anopheles mosquito that transmitted malaria. In his career he also contributed to the taxonomy of other parasites.
Christophers was also an honorary physician to King George V from 1927 to 1930. He was awarded CIE in 1915, OBE in 1918 and knighted in 1931.
He died in Dorset. He had married Elise Emma Sherman in 1902. They had several children.
See http://www.mosquitocatalog.org/pdfs/MS11N01P055.PDF pdf for a very full account