Nobel Prize Recipient. Dr. Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran gained world-wide recognition, as a Frenchman, for receiving the 1907 Nobel Prize in the category of Physiology and Medicine for his research, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "in recognition of his work on the role played by protozoa in causing diseases." This was the first time a French candidate received this coveted award in this category. He donated half of the Nobel monetary prize to establish the Laboratory of Tropical Medicine at the Pasteur Institute. After examining blood samples in 1889 from patients with malaria, he was able to definitively show that malaria is caused by another type of single-celled organism, a protozoan of the Plasmodium family, which attacks red blood cells. While doing that research, he identified other single-celled parasites that cause other diseases. During a visit to the malarial areas of France, he became the first scientist to express the view that the malarial parasite must be found outside the human body, which aided other scientists in discovering the source of malaria. Born the only son into a military family, he was educated in Paris, completed his higher education at College Sainte-Barbe, and Lycee Louis-le-Grand. He followed his father into military medicine, entering, in 1863, the Public Health School at Strasbourg. In 1866, he became a resident medical student in civilian hospitals, and, in 1867, he submitted his thesis and earned his medical degree. In 1893, Laveran was elected a Member of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1912, he was made a Commander of the French Legion of Honour. He also became an honorary member of a number of learned societies in France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Russia, the United States, the Netherlands Indies, Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil. His work on the treatment of trypanosomiases, and especially on infections with Trypanosoma gambiense protozoa, led to new scientific discoveries regarding the diseases these protozoa caused, as well as to new studies regarding similar protozoa and bacteria. He was made Honorary Director of the Pasteur Institute in 1915 on his 70th birthday. He married, yet had no children. He died after an illness lasting several months.