Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran

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Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran bigraphy, stories - French physician

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran : biography

18 June 1845 – 18 May 1922

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 veterinarians today to try to find a cure for malaria in animals. This was the first time that protozoa were shown to be a cause of disease. He later worked on the trypanosomes, particularly sleeping sickness. 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.