Sir Ronald Ross

Sir Ronald Ross was born in India in 1857 in Almora, a town near the Kumaon hills. He was sent to England for his schooling and medical education. In 1881, he returned to India and joined the British Army as a Medical Officer. In 1889, during a leave in England, he met Dr. Patrick Manson, who advised him to work towards discovering the mode of spread of malarial fever. After returning to India, he was posted to Madras, Bangalore, and then to Hyderabad, where he worked in a red-tiled building that still stands today, adjacent to the airport at Begumpet.

 Despite working in difficult circumstances with limited resources, on August 20th, 1897, he discovered that a particular type of mosquito called Anopheles was responsible for malaria.

For his important work in the field of tropical medicine, Ronald Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902. In memory of this great man, a marble stone was erected in the Begumpet building by the Cantonment authority in 1935. Ross passed away in 1932 in England.