Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran
Born	(1845-06-18)18 June 1845 Paris, France
Died	Paris, France
Resting place	Cimetière du Montparnasse
Nationality	France
Fields	Tropical medicine Parasitology
Institutions	School of Military Medicine of Val-de-Grâce Pasteur Institute
Alma mater	University of Strasbourg
Known for	Trypanosomiasis, malaria
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1907)
Spouse	Sophie Marie Pidancet
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Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (18 June 1845 – 18 May 1922) was a French physician who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1907 for his discoveries of parasitic protozoans as causative agents of infectious diseases such as malaria and trypanosomiasis. Following his father, Louis Théodore Laveran, he took up military medicine as profession. He obtained his medical degree from University of Strasbourg in 1867.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he joined the French Army. At the age of 29 he became Chair of Military Diseases and Epidemics at the École de Val-de-Grâce. At the end of his tenure in 1878 he worked in Algeria, where he made his major achievements. He discovered that the protozoan parasite (Plasmodium) was responsible for malaria, and that Trypanosoma caused trypanosomiasis or African sleeping sickness. In 1894 he returned to France to serve in various military health services. In 1896 he joined Pasteur Institute as Chief of the Honorary Service, from where he received the Noble Prize. He donated half of his Nobel money to establish Laboratory of Tropical Medicine at the Pasteur Institute. In 1908 he founded the Société de Pathologie Exotique.

Laveran was elected to French Academy of Sciences in 1893, and was conferred Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1912.

Early life and education

Alphonse Laveran was born at Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris, to parents Louis Théodore Laveran and Marie-Louise Anselme Guénard de la Tour Laveran. He was an only son with one sister. His family was in a military environment. His father was an army doctor and a Professor of military medicine at the École de Val-de-Grâce. His mother was the daughter of an army commander. At a young age his family went to Algeria to accompany his father's service. He was educated in Paris, and completed his higher education from Collège Saint Barbe and later from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Following his father he chose military medicine and entered the Public Health School at Strasbourg in 1863. In 1866 he became a resident medical student in the Strasbourg civil hospitals. In 1867 he submitted a thesis on the regeneration of nerves and earned his medical degree from the University of Strasbourg.

Career

Laveran was Medical Assistant-Major of the French Army at the time of Franco-Prussian War. He was posted to Metz, where the French were eventually defeated and the place occupied by Germans. He was sent to work at Lille hospital and then to the St Martin Hospital (now St Martin's House) in Paris. In 1874 he qualified a competitive examination by which he was appointed to the Chair of Military Diseases and Epidemics at the École de Val-de-Grâce, a position his father had occupied. His tenure ended in 1878 and he was sent to Algeria, where he remained until 1883. From 1884 to 1889 he was Professor of Military Hygiene at the École de Val-de-Grâce. In 1894 he was appointed Chief Medical Officer of the military hospital at Lille and then Director of Health Services of the 11th Army Corps at Nantes. By then he was promoted to the rank of Principal Medical Officer of the First Class. In 1896 he entered the Pasteur Institute as Chief of the Honorary Service to pursue a full-time research on tropical diseases.

Discoveries

Laveran's drawing in his 1880 notebook showing different stages of Plasmadium falciparum from a fresh blood.

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 found the causative organism to be a protozoan which he named Oscillaria malariae, but later renamed Plasmodium. This was the first time that protozoans were shown to be a cause of disease of any kind. The discovery was therefore a validation of the germ theory of diseases.

Laveran later worked on the trypanosomes, particularly sleeping sickness, and showed once again that protozoans were responsible for the disease.

Awards and honours

Laveran was awarded the Bréant Prize (Prix Bréant) of the French Academy of Sciences in 1889 and the Edward Jenner Medal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1902 for his discovery of the malarial parasite. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1907. He gave half the Prize for foundation of the Laboratory of Tropical Medicine at the Pasteur Institute. In 1908 he founded the Société de pathologie exotique, over which he presided for 12 years. He was elected to membership in the French Academy of Sciences in 1893, and was conferred Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1912. He was Honorary Director of the Pasteur Institute in 1915 on his 70th birthday. He was elected President of the French Academy of Medicine in 1920. His work was commemorated philatelically on a stamp issued by Algeria in 1954.

Personal life and death

Grave at Cimetière du Montparnasse

Commemorative plaque at the Château à Strasbourg

Laveran married Sophie Marie Pidancet in 1885. They had no children.

In 1922 he suffered from an undefined illness for some months and died in Paris. He is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Works

Laveran was a solitary but dedicated researcher and he wrote more than 600 scientific communications. Some of his major books are

• Nature parasitaire des accidents de l'impaludisme, description d'un nouveau parasite trouvé dans le sang des malades atteints de fièvre palustre. Paris 1881
• Traité des fièvres palustres avec la description des microbes du paludisme. Paris 1884
• Traité des maladies et épidémies des armées. Paris 1875
• Trypanosomes et Trypanosomiases . Masson, Paris 1904 Digital edition by the University and State Library Düsseldorf

External links

• Nobel Lecture
• CDC profile
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Fags.org profile
• Biography at NNDB
• Encyclopedia of World Biography
• Timeline of Laveran at Pasteur Institute