Sir Ronald Ross died at the Ross Institute in London on 16 September 1932, aged 75. The British doctor spent much of his career studying malaria and was best known for establishing mosquitoes’ role in transmitting the disease.

Ross joined the Indian Medical Service in 1881. While working in India, he investigated the theory that mosquitoes carried malaria. In August 1897, after dissecting mosquitoes that had fed on a patient with malaria, he found malaria parasites developing inside them. Further experiments with malaria in birds helped demonstrate how the parasite developed in mosquitoes and could pass to another host.

The work provided evidence that malaria could be fought by controlling the mosquitoes that transmitted it. In 1902, Ross received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the disease.

After leaving the Indian Medical Service, Ross worked at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He continued his research into malaria and its prevention. The Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases opened in London in 1926, with Ross as its director-in-chief.

He remained at the institute until his death there after a long illness.