Laveran, (Charles Louis) Alphonse (1845–1922)

French physician who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1907 for his discovery that certain protozoa can cause disease, for example in malaria.

Laveran was born in Paris and studied in Strasbourg. When the Franco-Prussian war broke out he became an army surgeon, and in 1874 he was appointed professor of military medicine at the Ecole du Val-de-Grâce. Between 1878 and 1883 he was posted to Algeria. He left the army in 1896 to join the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and in 1907 he used the money from his Nobel Prize to open the Laboratory of Tropical Diseases at the institute.

In 1880 Laveran examined blood samples from malarial patients and discovered amoebalike organisms growing within red blood cells. They divided and formed spores, which invaded unaffected blood cells. He noted that the spores were released in each affected red cell at the same time and corresponded with a fresh attack of fever in the patient.

Laveran's studies of protozoan diseases included leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis. His publications included Traité des maladies et épidemies des armées/Treatise on Army Sicknesses and Epidemics (1875) and Trypanosomes et trypanosomiasis (1904).