Ross and malaria (1911)

Abstract

In 1911 the British medical doctor Ronald Ross, who had already received the 1902 Nobel prize for his work on malaria, studied a system of differential equations modelling the spread of this disease. He showed that malaria can persist only if the number of mosquitoes is above a certain threshold. Therefore it is not necessary to kill all mosquitoes to eradicate malaria – it is enough to kill just a certain fraction. Similar epidemic models were later developed by Kermack and McKendrick.